


Something To Remember Me By

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: Angst and Porn, F/M, Femdom, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kink Negotiation, Post-Canon, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:55:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6140717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course Sarah had a life before Kyle appeared in it. It wasn't her fault that he didn't have one now that Genisys had been stopped. Now they had to figure out what to do with a brand new future, and Sarah was going to lead the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uncanny Valley

**Author's Note:**

> I'm breaking my usual rule to start posting before this is finished. But if I started chapter 8 yesterday and post only one chapter a week, I have enough of a buffer to keep to a weekly posting schedule. :)

Sarah heard far too much about fate in the ten years Pops had been looking after her. She couldn't go to a regular school, because that sort of thing wouldn't matter when the machines came. She needed to know her basic math and her history, but declensions and rules of grammar didn't count as important. Sarah learned more about how guns and bombs and knives were constructed than how to put together a birdhouse out of tongue depressors. She learned how to ride a bike, both a regular two wheeler and a motorcycle, drove a car at twelve and knew how to hotwire them long before that. Pops wouldn't let her practice hand to hand combat with him, out of fear that his titanium alloy bones would break hers.

"Calcium is too brittle an element to truly withstand such direct force," he would constantly tell her. "It must be reinforced. We will work on your discipline, and the muscle strength will come. The forces will make sure calluses develop on your bones."

"Gross," nine year old Sarah had told him, scrunching up her nose at him.

"Human bodies are gross," he had told her with absolute solemn agreement.

She never got the story of how Pops fell in with the different crews that ran the streets without getting caught up in turf wars. He somehow got a number of them to teach her different skills without calling for her allegiance, something unheard of. Henry taught her how to pick locks and found her a quick study on phone phreaking. Cesar thought it was hilarious that her tiny self was putting together pipe bombs and pointing out inaccuracies in the Anarchist's Cookbook. Pedro worked on her hand to hand, teaching her to fight dirtier than most gang girls knew could be possible. Billy taught her how to wire things together, not always to go boom, and delighted in helping her steal cable for his building as a thank you.

Every once in a while, Sarah colored pictures of these odd friends of hers, which they thought was amusing. "Never had a kid sister before," Javier told her as they went over how to hand load bullets from spent casings. "This is kinda nice. Not sure 'bout your Pops, though. Shouldn't little girls play with dolls or something?"

"I do have dolls," Sarah had replied, carefully loading the black powder. "They're just full of homemade napalm and gasoline jelly in case assholes think they can raid our house."

That shut him up quick. And everyone else, too, for that matter. They all knew it was absolutely true, and she didn't make empty threats. She was still too much of a child to lie about that.

Sarah didn't do drugs, seeing what it did to Celia and Nancy and little Nina from down the block, their teeth rotting out, noses bleeding, hair thinning out. They were thin and wasted, turning five dollar tricks every chance they got, itching between their legs or puking from the rotgut alcohol they tried to get. The boys on the block were a little more subtle about the effects of the drugs, or maybe they just ran off the highs and were knifed for the trouble. Sarah could never really tell which it was, and Pops wouldn't tell her. "You are still a little girl, Sarah Connor, and must get more training," he would say when she asked about it. And then he would drill her with the proper makes and models of assault rifles and handguns, the proper way to hit the tender spots on a human body, how fast she would have to be to avoid the inevitable blood spray if she had to slit a throat.

Whoever her mysterious future benefactor was, they certainly had an odd idea of a child's education and protection. But it worked, so she supposed she couldn't complain.

Pops was hilariously at a loss when her period started when she was nearly twelve. Here was a scrawny eleven year old girl, hips rounding out, chest budding, cramping low in her belly and the bleeding that started, bright red and awful. "My systems do not include information about how humans deal with this," he admitted. "The physiology can be explained, but not the day to day mechanics of keeping the blood inside your body."

She had to facepalm at that, because no, that wasn't how it worked, and even she knew that much by then. Celia ran her mouth off too much, and Sarah had seen the girls at work anyway. She knew how sex and the female body worked. Pops didn't have to provide for that part of her education.

The idea of being the mother of the resistance grated on her. She was only special because someday Kyle Reese was going to come along, save her life, knock her up, and then die. She would be left alone with John Connor as a single mother.

At least Mary had Joseph with her to raise Jesus Christ. Sarah didn't even get that much.

"I'm supposed to have a kid someday," Sarah lamented to Cesar and Pedro one day when she was fourteen. "My fate is to be a single mother. What the fuck?"

Pedro cackled and handed her a beer. "I don't hold with any fate bullshit."

"Anything else your fate says about you?" Cesar asked curiously.

Sarah thought of what Pops had told her about the future. "Well... no. Nothing else." She took a swig of the beer and frowned at her friends. "That's shitty."

"Yeah, no kidding," Cesar grumped. "You're good people, Sarah. Twisted like us, maybe, and not in our gang, but you're not with theirs, neither."

Cesar was seventeen to her fourteen, almost eighteen. He was taller than her, and she was forever doomed to be short. His skin took on a golden cast from the summer sun, his hair dark and tousled, his brown eyes expressive and his mouth kind. He never treated her like a nuisance, and filled in the gaps with her hand to hand when Pedro couldn't figure out how to compensate for her size. These were her two best friends, possibly, if she was allowed friends at all.

He was her first kiss when she was fifteen, and took her virginity as kindly as he knew how. "Are you sure?" he'd ask, gulping a little nervously as he looked for her Pops. "Dude won't kill me if he knew I was messing with his baby girl, would he?"

"Nah," Sarah had told him, not sure about that in the slightest. He wasn't going to be her baby's father, and history had nothing to say about Cesar. But he was handsome and thoughtful, selfless in his own way. He'd worked her body to a fever pitch, giving her pleasure before it was all over; sex seemed messy and awkward and more than a little horrible when she had seen the girls turn their tricks, but it had been anything but with Cesar.

She mourned him when the Bloods shot him and a few other Kings in the alley where they were doing a gun running deal. Maybe because of that, Pops had stolen the guns back from the Bloods and left mangled bodies in his wake. The police didn't know what to make of it, and Sarah didn't know if she should have felt some kind of pride at having Cesar's tactical knife at her waist.

Some sweet sixteen that was. Fuck fate. It held nothing but misery for her.

"Kyle Reese will arrive when you are nineteen," Pops reminded her when she railed against her place in his history. "You are a waitress at the time, and the other terminator will eliminate every Sarah Connor it finds in the phone book."

"Yeah, I know," she'd retorted. "You keep telling me."

"And you must mate with Kyle Reese when he arrives in this time."

 _"I know!"_ she snapped. "God, just stop telling me that. That's three years away, just stop talking about it!"

Pops had frowned at her. "This troubles you."

"Of course it does!"

"But it is your fate. You are the mother to John Connor, leader of the Resistance."

Sarah had merely growled at him and stomped to her room to be alone. And mourn.

Three years went by quickly, especially when she tried to ignore it. She didn't want to think about the future, about Skynet, about babies or mating or the end of the world. She didn't want to remember why Pops had to save her life when she was nine or why all of this training was necessary. Life was difficult enough as it was. Sarah attempted to try starting relationships with men outside of gangs, lying about her age to get into clubs. There were kinky bastards that saw her young face and wanted to tie her up or spank her or dress her up in baby doll dresses as she called them daddy. That definitely wasn't her thing. The men that wanted her to spank them made her feel vaguely creepy and awful, and it was uncomfortable bossing around someone to do menial shit just because they got off on being told what to do. How was that hot? Asking Pops was definitely out of the question, and she wasn't about to track down Henry or Javier or any of the old crews she hung out with as a kid. Truth be told, a lot of them were already dead or strung out on drugs; the girls on the block were long gone, too.

And then she met Kyle Reese. And then they went to the future. And saved it.

Sarah hadn't allowed herself to fantasize about Kyle Reese while growing up; it hadn't mattered what he looked like or acted like, because history knew nothing else about him. He saved her from a terminator, they slept together, he fathered her child. Pops had made it clear that it had been only two days that they knew each other before he died. Somehow the other version of her had said that they had loved each other a lifetime's worth, but this Sarah thought that was bullshit. How could she fall so deeply in love with someone she didn't even know? That was romance novel drivel, and at this point, Sarah knew that those things weren't real.

That made it something of a shock to see how handsome he was, how he tried so hard to do the right thing, how much hero worship he had for her and John.

This was real. Those were real people, and not just vague ideas and names.

It was kind of sad how awed he was by the sight of a park, trees with all of their leaves, or gardens in full bloom. Taking him to IHOP meant that he was sick in the parking lot soon after, too much batter and syrup making him dizzy and ill. "Worth it," he tried to tell her, smile on his lips. Sarah didn't have the heart to make fun of him when she thought of _why_ sugar and pancakes and berries would make him ill. How many dead things had he had to eat to survive to fight another day? How many spoiled and rotten rations had he consumed in order to have ordinary food be a luxury?

He'd been amazed at all the things she had taken for granted. There were no restaurants or diners in the future, no parks or screaming children, no hookers and johns trolling the back alleys after dark. There were no schools, no drug stores, no supermarkets or video stores. This kind of future was one Kyle had never prepared for, and he didn't know how to react to it.

To be honest, Sarah hadn't prepared for this version of the future, either. Now there didn't seem to be much point to some of it, and she was at a loss of what to do now. No one needed a petite girl, fiercer than a blade's honed edge, full of outdated skills to get by on the street. Hell, this was strange and new to her, with cell phones and internet and everything public to such a degree she had never heard of before. Sarah didn't exist in a world like this. There were no records for her, nothing for authorities to pin onto her.

The future was wide open, uncharted, undefined. Her fate was her own.

And it scared the everliving fuck out of her now that she had it.

What did she want to do now? She'd never really thought of what would happen after they stopped Skynet/Genisys. There hadn't been time to think of a separate future, and she had no other identity than Sarah Connor, mother of John Connor, leader of the Resistance. Now that she had seen what could be, she sure as hell didn't want kids. Maybe it was selfish, but she had never really cultivated any maternal instinct over the past ten years. She'd never been around babies or young children, and certainly didn't know what to do with them. No doctor would permanently prevent pregnancy in a nineteen year old; there were more ways to do that besides just condoms, at least, pills and patches and rings and implants and IUD's.

The John Connor she had met was never going to happen. Never.

Lost in her own thoughts on these matters, it took Sarah a while to realize that Kyle was just as lost as she was. As much as he smiled at her jokes and tried to do whatever had to be done, there was still a part of him that was missing. He was trapped here in a future he didn't understand, without anything familiar. At first, she thought his tendency to look over his shoulder and startle was because of the newness of everything. He calmed when she was close, if only because then he would be on the alert for threats to _her_ instead of to him.

Trying to draw him out of his frightening memories of a future that wouldn't be, Sarah smiled at him and had him sit next to her in the living room of Pops' apartment. "Hey. Tell me about the women in your time, huh? What were they like?"

"Good fighters," Kyle responded easily. She couldn't quite read his expression, so she assumed that he missed them and didn't want her to feel bad about that.

"No, not that. I assume that they were, since they survived. I mean, was there anyone special? A girl?" she asked, now wondering if he had left behind a girlfriend or other family that he hadn't mentioned to her. His entire life couldn't have been built up around John, could it?

"No, never," he said. The earnestness of his answer had to be true.

Oh, dear.

"Was there just not time for that?"

Kyle's eyes raked over her face, and it felt almost like a caress even though he wasn't physically touching her. "I guess that was part of it. I dedicated my life to taking down the machines," he told her. "They killed and destroyed everything I ever knew. They almost killed me as a kid. John saved me, and even after I fucked up a mission and was caught by the machines, John came back and busted me out of the work camp I got sent to. There wasn't time. There couldn't be."

 

"And the other part? You had me built up in your mind before you met me..."

"No, it wasn't like that," he protested, leaning away from her a little, eyes wide. "It wasn't. I had to protect you, yes, but it wasn't like that. John told me stories of what it was like to grow up with you, how strong you were, how you kept him safe. He kept me safe the same way, from the time I was a kid until he sent me back. I had to keep you safe, too. I couldn't get distracted by anything or anyone."

"Not anyone?" she asked, eyebrow lofted in surprise despite the shake of his head. She couldn't help but think of Cesar suddenly, the careless grin on his face and the way his hair fluttered in the wind as he ran. She hadn't thought of him in years, but Sarah suddenly wondered if Kyle would have turned out like him, all self confident and capable, if the machines hadn't destroyed the world. The thought made her sad somehow, hurt by the lost potential in so many lives.

Sarah cupped his face in her hand and smiled at him a little. "You're a good man, Kyle. You deserve better than to be alone."

"I wasn't alone. I had the troop, the others in the field in my unit."

"Not the same," she murmured, leaning back. Kyle followed her motion for a moment, then returned to his prior position. He was drawn to her, fate or not, and Sarah wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Changing the subject, she tried to smile at him. "What about personal things? What was the most important item you had that you were sorry to leave behind?"

"The picture of you that I had," Kyle admitted, eyes sliding away from hers. "The one John gave me. I always kept it with me."

Sarah slowly let out a breath to keep herself from saying how creepy that felt. "What did you do for fun, then?"

"I trained," he replied. He didn't seem to think it was incongruous at all. "Or scavenged for food and supplies with the others. Target practice. That kind of thing."

War and death and loss, hovering constantly on the edge of being discovered by the machines or dying of illness and filth. It was a horrible way to live, one that Sarah couldn't even contemplate; as much as she had training with Pops and the gangbangers, she also got to go to movies and run around in parks and slip unnoticed into dance clubs late at night. She knew how to do things other than shoot, slice or forage.

"Do you know how to dance?"

"No."

"Then let me teach you," Sarah offered, not even sure why she was doing it. Kyle didn't mean anything to her, right? Just because he was there and had nowhere else to go didn't mean this was fate. It didn't mean he was the only one she was ever going to be with.

Kyle seemed adorably awkward, not knowing how to refuse her even though he clearly wanted to. She grinned at him, amused by that, and stood up. She pulled him to his feet, humming a dance song that had been her favorites in the clubs of 1983. Her singing voice wasn't all that great, but he didn't seem to catch the rhythm of the song until she started to sing. His movement was stiff and self-conscious, embarrassment on his features, and he nearly choked when she put his hands on her hips and pulled his body close to hers. "You gotta feel the music, Reese," she said, unconsciously purring at him the way she used to with Cesar. "Let it move you. Let it tell you where you gotta go."

"I need you to do that for me," he said, discomfited. "We don't—There wasn't opportunity or time to dance. There wasn't much to celebrate, we couldn't stop—"

"But now you can. Now you can stop. We can figure out what you want to do. What we want to do," she amended when he would have spoken. "I don't have any great life plans myself, you know. We've stopped the end of the world. I never thought about what would come next."

"Neither have I."

Sarah gave him a sad smile. "So let's figure it out."

"If you say so," he told her dubiously.

"I say so," she had replied, warmth in her tone.

Later, she would think about that conversation, the tangled feelings it inspired in her, the sadness and awful responsibility gaping in her chest. He was lost, so lost, and didn't know how to function in a world without war. He didn't know what to do in quiet times, how to behave like a civilian. The boy he would have been was vastly different from the Kyle that existed now with her, and he could never be that other Kyle Reese growing up in that house with his parents. This one was cast adrift without direction, and he didn't know how to give it to himself.

She must have missed the nightmares and the source of his thousand yard stares. Or maybe he stopped trying to hide it from her as the weeks went on. Pops did his odd jobs to keep the apartment and hiding spots paid for, leaving the two of them alone during the day. She had used the time to reacquaint herself with pop culture, what the internet was, how social media worked. Kyle just... sat there. At first, she assumed he was watching what she was, trying to absorb the differences in the new world they were in. But he never protested when she changed channels or movies midstream, when she shuffled through radio stations, when she complained that dub step wasn't as good as new wave had been. Leaving the news on as background noise helped her catch up with the current world of 2017.

Later, she would be ashamed at herself for not considering Kyle.

The screams jolted her out of a dead sleep, and she was instantly on alert for threat. For a moment, she thought it was another gangland war from the 1980's LA, but no, it was Kyle screaming as if he was being tortured. Sarah ran into Kyle's room in nothing more than a cami and underwear, seeing him thrashing around and trying to fight his blankets. Leaping onto the bed, she wrestled him beneath her, catching his wrists in her hands and pinning him down. Still sleeping, Kyle whimpered painfully, tears leaking from beneath closed eyelids. "At ease, soldier," she told him in a firm voice, remembering how quickly he had leapt to do her bidding even when confused the first time she had met him. "You're safe now."

Tension bled out of him, and his breath sighed out. A few moments more, and then Sarah felt safe enough to let go of his wrists. She still straddled his chest, but his posture was loose. The worst of it had to be over, so she peeled some of the blankets off of him.

He was wearing nothing at all.

Sarah gulped, feeling silly and embarrassed and terrible at the same time, as if she was taking advantage of him in his sleep. Hastily she slid off of him and off of the bed, closing the door quietly behind her as she left the room.

Pops was in the kitchen tinkering with a radio transmitter. "Did you mate with him?"

"No!" she hissed, lips compressed into an unhappy line. "He had a nightmare."

"Sleep does not preclude mating, Sarah Connor."

"That's called rape, Pops. Not going to go there."

"By the pupil dilation each of you exhibits and the increased pulse rate, he would be very willing accommodate your needs to mate."

Sarah groaned. "I'm not having this conversation with you."

"You still should mate with him," Pops replied in that same reasonable tone he always took on the subject. He didn't even bother to look up, and merely frowned at a tangle of wire in front of him. "You are still Sarah Connor."

"John Connor is not going to be born. Ever."

Now Pops looked up, perplexed. "This invites paradox."

"I don't care," Sarah said, shaking her head. "I'm not going to follow some twisted version of history that isn't going to happen anymore. Got it?"

"Got it," Pops intoned. "You should seek different employment, then. Do not be a waitress."

Smiling faintly at him, she nodded. "I'll keep that in mind. Good night, Pops."

"Good night, Sarah Connor."

Sarah went back to bed. There was enough to think about, and she was too exhausted to try to untangle the mess that was her life.

***

Sarah started paying attention to the stares and listless way that Kyle moved around when he wasn't busy doing something she or Pops asked him to do. "We'll need jobs," she told him, and he merely nodded at her. Things cost money, after all, and Pops couldn't handle the increase in bills with his part time jobs. Given the gun control climate, being gunsmiths weren't good options. "Mechanic stuff, maybe?"

"Sounds good."

"Are you just going to agree with everything I say?"

"When you make sense, sure."

"Or is it more than that?"

Kyle frowned at her. "What do you mean by that?"

"How long were you a soldier?"

"Since John found me when I was twelve," Kyle responded with a shrug. For him it was normal, becoming a child soldier and subsuming everything he was to a cause greater than himself.

"And now there's no one to give you orders."

"I didn't _always_ have orders," Kyle huffed, turning away from her uncomfortably.

"But you didn't have hobbies, really. You didn't have free time. For all that I learned how to kick ass and protect myself, I still had a chance to go out and have fun. I was a messed up kid, but I was still kid," Sarah said, standing up and moving into his line of vision. "Even if you didn't have orders to do something, it was all about the mission, right?"

He got to his feet, a slow and lumbering movement she had seen in gangers trying to avoid setting off someone tougher than them without making it seem like a cowering move. "It was kill or be killed, Sarah. We had to survive to bring down Skynet. That was my life."

"And now?" she asked softly.

That brought him up short. "I don't know."

In the news, there were soldiers coming back from wars overseas and floundering. They didn't always integrate back into everyday life, whether because of what they had seen and couldn't stop seeing, or because they were simply so changed that they didn't fit back into the molds they had come out of. Some of them couldn't handle the quiet, so they raced right back into war again or killed themselves. Kyle didn't have those options open to him, so he was one of those floundering in a sea of civilians.

"What do you _want?"_

His gaze fell on her, hot and heavy, yet somehow not uncomfortable. He didn't say the words, though Sarah knew she was high on his list of wants.

"This is better than the world I remember," Kyle said slowly. "But it's not the world I know."

"That doesn't answer my question."

He let out a frustrated breath and ran his hands through his hair, turning away from her.

"Tell me," Sarah demanded, losing patience with this dance they were doing.

"You, okay?" he snapped, turning back to her, hands falling to his sides. "I don't know about anything else because I never had anything else I really wanted. After a while, you learn not to want anything because you're not going to get it." Tension thrummed through his body, but Sarah didn't for a moment feel in danger. It wasn't directed at her, she knew, and he would lay down his life for hers if she simply asked him to.

Sarah reached out to touch his arm gently. The tension was still there, tightly wound, coiled to spring, nowhere to direct it. "I know what it's like to want something you can never have," she murmured, letting her fingers slide down his arm. "To be stuck with a fate you can't change, can't get around." She shook her head sharply when he was about to say something. "But you can still get around it in some ways. We're proof of that."

"It hurts to want," Kyle murmured.

"I know," she replied, biting her lip. His eyes gravitated toward it, and Sarah couldn't help but reach up to touch his mouth. "Kneel down."

Kyle did it without question, eyes on her the entire time. His movement was fluid, a flow of limbs in front of her, folding down into a kneeling position, his back straight and his eyes locked to hers, her fingers still on his lips. Sarah traced the edge of his lips, wondering what the hell was happening between the two of them. Something flickered in the back of her mind, that he needed a place, a home to belong to, and didn't know how to be anything else but a warrior. He had fought in a war against machines almost as long as she'd been alive, and all he knew to do was to serve a higher ideal. John Connor had been his personal savior and ideal, and now Sarah was determined that John would never be.

"You do what I say, don't you?" she asked, her voice husky.

"When you have something worth saying," Kyle replied, lips stretching into a smile.

Heart in her throat, Sarah tipped the edge of her forefinger into his mouth. Without being told, his tongue touched the pad of her finger reverently. She reached with her other hand to caress the back of his head, fingers carding through his hair. It was getting long now; neither had left much, and haircuts were low on the list of necessary things to get. She could see the corded muscle of his neck loosen, the gaze in his eyes soften slightly.

"Not pain," she murmured without realizing she was speaking aloud.

"I don't think you could ever hurt me," Kyle said, his voice just as hushed.

_Yes, I could. If I kicked you out. If I told you that your sacrifices were for nothing. If I said you had no place with me. If you didn't belong._

It was an uncomfortable realization suddenly. Sarah was his home, and Sarah would be the one to give him purpose. She could quiet the demons in his nightmares, the startles and panicked moments he tried to hide.

If she wanted to. If she was willing to take up that responsibility.

He had willingly forsaken everything he had ever known to help her, not knowing she didn't need it. He had felt responsible for her safety, for protecting her from the terminators sent back to hunt her down. The least she could do was take some responsibility over the current situation, get him into a comfortable place where his nightmares didn't hold sway.

"You belong to me, don't you?" she whispered.

"Always," Kyle promised without hesitation.

Oh, dear God, was she prepared for this?

No, but she was going to have to be.

***  
***


	2. An Interesting Future

Kyle was a terrible cook. Uncomfortable with the sensual thoughts she had about him kneeling in front of her, Sarah had changed the mood and had him try to make lunch. He couldn't figure out the stove, and he wound up microwaving the soup far too long. "I didn't know!" he cried when she burned her tongue and had to gulp a glass of water. "Everything I find is expired and awful and we nuke it that long to be sure we don't get dysentery or something! And I really doubt that you want me hunting rats for our lunch."

Sarah opened her mouth and then shut it. "Um. No. Very no."

"So now what?" he asked her unhappily.

"Now, we learn to make the basics," she declared, feeling on more comfortable ground.

He was amazed by the grocery store, even though he had assisted in the shopping before. The choices boggled his mind, and he was paralyzed by the different kinds of peanut butter, tuna fish tins, cereals and fruit. The aisles of prepared foods led to quiet awe and him halting in his tracks, staring at everything. Sarah almost wanted to laugh, but then she recalled his spare statements about food and hunting rats.

Instead, she looped her arm through his. "Thanks for letting me catch up," she said, giving him a bright smile. "Let's pick out my favorite things, okay?"

Following her lead, she stocked up on staples even though Pops had supplied the apartment with a number of nonperishable items. She picked out drinks, noodles, pasta, sauce, fruits, vegetables, desserts, snacks and even some beer. The clerk didn't ask either of them for ID, and the money Pops had given her passed muster. Not counterfeit this time, then.

Kyle was good at following directions on the back of boxes or recipes. It wasn't a natural skill for him, but at least he wouldn't starve. He was a quick study, and learned all the recipes that Sarah said she liked. Pops knew who to go to for fake ID's, and got Kyle one with a slightly different last name. And if he spelled Reece as Reese, well, it was a sloppy scrawled signature, anyway. Sarah was now twenty-two instead of nineteen; he had explained that his contact had found a Sarah Connor who would have been twenty-two in 2017, and used her birth records to create Sarah's paperwork. Sarah knew better than to ask what had happened to that other Sarah Connor, how she could be so conveniently missing.

When Pops brought home engine parts, Kyle had a knack for cleaning them out and putting them back together; he was soon enough hired on at the garage down the street for some odds and ends. Talking with some of the guys in the shop also landed him part time handyman and some construction work, so that kept him busy at odd hours. The work was easy and monotonous, keeping his hands busy but his mind wandering. Loud sounds from dropped equipment had him flinching and ducking, and he tried his best to ignore the ribbing from some of the men in the garage. The other handymen or construction workers didn't say a word about it; some of them were former military, too, and recognized it for what it was. "Headphones," one of them had mentioned to him in a confidential tone. "Get some music going, it drowns out the sudden sounds with a rhythm. Sometimes it helps."

Once he got a working music player and some thumping dance music and rock and roll, it did muffle the sounds of construction and car repair. He startled less at work, and sometimes found it was a technique that worked in the apartment, too.

Sarah didn't want to be a waitress, but she was considered a high school dropout and there were few options for her. The other Sarah had just made it to her senior year, but never finished high school, and Sarah wasn't interested in trying to get a GED. The corner bar needed a bartender, and she picked up that skill as quickly as she had how to disassemble, clean and reassemble a Glock or Ruger.

"I don't like it," Kyle murmured, frowning at her as he dished out a casserole he had worked on for dinner. "That kind of guy that sits in a bar late at night."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Like I don't know how to handle myself."

He flushed and looked embarrassed, as well he should. "It's an unnecessary risk."

"I can decide what's unnecessary, thanks," Sarah replied. She took a vicious stab at the casserole, and took a bite. "Huh. Your cooking's gotten a lot better."

Though he was clearly still irritated with her, the praise made him smile and the slope of his shoulders tilted down into a more relaxed pose. "I've been practicing."

"Practice makes perfect?" she snarked at him, making him smile.

That didn't distract him from his objection, but he was quiet about it. He sat in a corner of the bar nursing a beer all night and then walked her home. "Told you I'd be fine."

"I feel better knowing that for sure."

"I've got mace in one pocket and a butterfly knife in the other. I'll be fine."

Kyle sighed out a breath. "Yeah. But this way, _I'm_ fine, too."

She looked up at him sharply. "Nightmares getting worse?"

He stopped walking and turned toward her in surprise. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No," she lied. Kyle looked at her incredulously, even though he would have been relieved if that was true. "Okay, fine," she admitted after a moment. "Once. Maybe twice."

"Sarah..."

"Okay, a bunch of times. Reese, I swear I only checked on you once. Better?"

"Not really," Kyle said glumly.

"Is it better if you talk about it?"

"No," he replied, beginning to walk again.

She had to pick up the pace to keep up with him, damn his longer legs. "Reese! Wait up!"

He stopped abruptly, then faced her. "Why? So you can feel sorry for me? That I don't know a damn thing about this world? That you're coping so much better than I am? I'm _trying,_ Sarah, just like you wanted me to. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, and learning everything they tell me to learn to do this job. I'm trying to fit in and adjust to living here, but I can't fit in and _it's not working."_

Yanking on his shirt, Sarah pulled him down and kissed his mouth. Mid-rant, his mouth was open and startled, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. He leaned into the kiss, fingers tightening around her shoulders as he made a soft, desperate noise low in his throat. Sarah laced one hand into his hair at the nape of his neck, and let her other drift down from his chest. His cock jumped against her palm when she brushed against it, and he made another soft sound.

 _Careful,_ she reminded herself. She knew what she was about, even if he didn't, and he was so wound up and tense that he was likely to snap.

"Follow me," she said against his mouth, and led him over to the CVS five blocks away. It was still open, and she breezed her way through the aisles to pick out a few things, Kyle following in her wake like a lost puppy. If she thought he had been overwhelmed in a grocery store, this left him utterly dumbstruck. He paid no attention to her purchases, instead looking around at the items in stock, his pulse thudding in his throat.

He was scared of this world, she realized. There was no place he recognized, no place he truly fit, and he was simply going through the motions because she told him to.

Pops was out, thank God, because she didn't want him to scan the bag and figure out what she had planned for Kyle. He had been awkward enough while discussing Kyle before, and all that talk of mating was just going to drive her insane.

"Take off your clothes," she told him, nearly barking the order. His hands started moving to the buttons on his shirt before he even realized what he was doing, and the sight set off a chain reaction low in her belly. He would do whatever she wanted, whatever she said. He was hers, just waiting to belong, just needing to be needed.

"What are we doing?" he asked her, hesitant and unsure. His shoulders were hunched a little, as if he expected this to be a cruel joke. "What's changed?"

 _You need it_ sounded condescending as hell, so she merely smiled at him. "I like how you kiss me," she said instead.

Kyle grinned at her, heart in his eyes, shoulders sagging in relief. "Oh."

"This is _my_ choice, Kyle," she said as he began unbuttoning his shirt. "Is it yours?"

"Oh, yes."

Sarah approached him as he tossed his shirt carelessly aside and started unbuttoning the top of his jeans. "Is it really? Or is it because you think it's what I want?"

His smile was tender and more than a little sad. "I fell in love with the stories I heard about you, Sarah. Before I even met you, I knew nobody could compare to you. And now that I have met you, I know you're everything I ever wanted."

How could she ignore that? How could she walk away?

Simple: she couldn't.

She helped him out of the sneakers and jeans, and licked her lips at the sight of his muscled body in just tighty whities and socks. Her fingers danced across his abs, and she laughed when he huffed a bit, holding back laughter.

"Get on the bed," she told him. "Let's see if I'm really everything you ever wanted."

Kyle did as she asked, lying on the bed spread eagled without any self consciousness. That was something she was liking about him more and more. She didn't know about that need to be needed, but it wasn't unfamiliar, either. She knew how burying herself in work could keep her distracted, keep her from thinking about the gaping maw the future had become.

Putting the scarf she had purchased on Kyle's head, Sarah sat beside him. "Grab hold of the headboard," she told him. "Stay still and just feel what I'm doing. I don't want you thinking of anything else."

"Tall order," he quipped, swallowing nervously.

She swatted his stomach, making him yelp. "Shut it, soldier. I have _plans_ for you." A total lie, but he didn't need to know that.

He swallowed nervously again, but then lifted his chin. "I can take whatever you give me."

"I know you can," she purred, sliding her hand over the spot she had smacked. Kyle's breath whistled in through his lips, and he held it for a long moment. "Breathe," she murmured. "I need you alert, Kyle. Breathe through it."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied in a joking tone, but she could feel a serious thread in that, too. He needed this, and some part of her needed this, too, whatever this was.

She was flying by the seat of her pants and hoping they would both soar.

Stroking his skin carefully, Sarah got acquainted with the feel of him under her hands, where his ticklish spots were, where he was even more sensitive to her touch. His cock was thick and full before she even reached his toes, and the sensation of her nails gently running over him made it twitch. She blew over his skin, and let her hair fall over it, and Kyle's breath whistled in through his teeth. He whimpered her name, shivering slightly, but didn't let go of the headboard or even try to move without her permission.

"You're doing really well, Kyle," Sarah murmured, knowing full well she didn't have this kind of self-control. If she had been on the receiving end, she would have hooked her leg around his shoulders and pulled him in, demanding that he eat her out and let her come.

His breath hitched, and Kyle moaned a little. Even with the scarf, Sarah could see the tightening muscles of his cheeks, indicating that he was holding his eyes tightly shut. "Th-thank you," he whispered, voice cracking.

Running her fingernail down the seam on the underside of his cock, Sarah watched it jump and start to seep a little. "What do you want, Kyle?"

"What you'll give me," he whimpered.

"And if this is it?"

"Then this is it." The raw ache in his voice was almost painful to listen to.

"What about this?" she asked, wrapping her hand around his cock and giving it a few pumps.

Kyle groaned, head pushing back into the pillow and his hands tightening on the headboard. "Th-then that would be it."

"If I could give you whatever you wanted," Sarah prompted, breath ghosting over the head of his cock, "what would you ask for?"

"You," he whimpered.

"How?"

"However you'll let me."

"You fantasized about me, haven't you?" she asked, still moving her fist over his cock. He twitched and moaned, trying to hold himself still. "What did you imagine me doing?"

He nearly sobbed as her palm grazed the slick head of his cock. His eyes must have tightened further, as she could see his nose crinkling in an embarrassed grimace. "Sarah," he whined.

"Tell me, soldier," she ordered.

"You. Your mouth on me. Me holding you tight." He made a desperate sound deep in his throat when her tongue touched the tip of his cock. "God, you riding me. Bending you over the missions report desk." Another gurgling sound of need. "Me holding your hips and licking you. Sucking on your breasts. Unh," he groaned as her mouth descended over his cock, her hand sliding down to cup his balls. "Yes, please," he whimpered, pulling on the headboard. "Sarah, please, please, don't stop."

But Sarah pulled back, his cock falling from her mouth with a wet pop. "You're a good soldier, Kyle," she purred. He made a soft whining sound deep in his throat, and she ran her tongue along the length of his cock in response. "You do everything asked of you, and you never expect anything in return." She licked him again, then sucked the tip of his cock hard. "It's time for you to have a reward for that service, hm?"

"Yes, please," Kyle gasped, limbs twitching as he tried to hold still.

"Spread 'em farther," Sarah ordered, shifting her position so that she could lie between his spread legs. He made soft choking sounds as she caressed the inside of his thighs while licking his balls and perineum. It sounded like he wanted to muffle the noises he made, like he was afraid of being too loud. That would make sense in a future where machines could hunt him down, but right now that was a distant memory. Pops would tease her, maybe, with all his talk about mating with Kyle, but Sarah wasn't going to do this for a future that wouldn't be.

"I wanna hear you," Sarah told him, sucking a ball into her mouth. He didn't bite his lip or try to muffle the sound anymore, and groaned. It was long and loud, and Sarah could feel desire pool deep in her belly. She was making him sound this way. He was completely under her power, and he would only feel what she wanted him to feel.

Damn, if that didn't feel powerful.

Sarah licked his cock like a lollipop, then swallowed it down as far back as she could. He moaned and writhed beneath her mouth, a fine tremor in his hips when she held him down beneath her. She shifted to straddle his thigh, the knob of his knee pressing against her as she arched up to suck on the head of his cock. Just a little more of a twist in her hips, and then she was grinding down on his thigh as she sucked on his cock, his whimpers and groans filling her ears and making her move faster against him. Sarah rocked in a rhythm she knew would get her off, running her tongue around his cock in circles until she came with a soft sigh.

"I'm gonna," he ground out at one point, just as his cock twitched. Sarah just sucked harder, and then he spurted into her mouth, the salty taste she wasn't terribly fond of. She swallowed it down anyway, liking the resulting mess even less.

She slipped off the bed and removed the scarf. "Hey," she said with a soft smile.

Kyle looked at her with utter adoration. "Hey."

"You can let go now," she teased, nodding toward the headboard.

"Oh. Yeah." He had to push off the headboard to get his fingers to unclench, and he hesitantly reached out for her. "Sarah..."

"Yeah?"

"That was amazing."

"And you haven't even fucked me yet."

He winced and managed to still look somewhat hopeful at the same time. "Oh."

Sarah cocked her head to the side to contemplate him, and then shucked off her lower half of clothing. "But we can always get started on that."

Kyle helped her climb on top of him, and held her in place against his mouth so he could eagerly lick at her clit, tongue curling against her sticky folds. She had to tell him to soften the licks, or to move his tongue to the right spot, and one point ground out "Dammit, just use your fingers to hold everything open if you need to, you can you use your hands!" He didn't seem to care that she hadn't bothered to shave anything, that his face was shoved into her. If anything, he seemed to revel in that, enthusiastic in his appreciation for this. Sarah wanted to laugh at the sound of his contented sighs, but oh, it felt good and she wanted to ride his face forever.

He actually protested when she moved off of him after he brought her to orgasm. His jaw must have ached, especially the way he had to move it side to side as she scrambled across the bed for the CVS bag, but he didn't protest once.

The foil packet in her hand confused him, and she just gave him a saucy wink. "Let me take care of it, okay? Trust me, you'll last longer this way."

She rolled a condom over his mostly erect cock, then whipped off her shirt and unclipped her bra to toss it aside. It wasn't a very sexy or erotic move, but Kyle's eyes tracked her hungrily, his hands twitching on the bed as if he was afraid to touch her.

Straddling him again, Sarah tugged on his sheathed cock. "This is mine," she told him, feeling silly and awful. But the love in his eyes was only too evident as he solemnly nodded. She sank down on him, a little contented sigh coming out of her, and she lifted his hands to her breasts. "You belong to me, Kyle," she said as she started to rock over him. He moved his fingers to caress the slope of her breasts, then rub at her nipples as she moaned. "You're mine," she said, leaning behind her to grasp his thighs. He got the hint and picked up his knees, tilting his hips toward her, digging his heels into the bed.

"Fuck," she ground out, eyes sliding shut as she hissed in pleasure. "God, that spot right there, keep hitting it like that."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," he grunted. He was grinning at her when she cracked her eyes open to look at him incredulously. It was so silly, she couldn't help but laugh as well.

The sex stopped being so serious after that, and she rode him hard and fast. After a while, she fell forward, grasping his shoulders, chasing her pleasure, teeth grit as she grunted, her hair smacking her face and almost annoying her enough to lose the moment. But Kyle tilted his hips up as she came down hard, and Sarah let out a smothered wail as she felt a bolt of pleasure shoot through her. "Yeah. That," she gasped, keeping up a punishing pace. But he met it, his own moans a counterpoint to hers, and the condom kept him from coming too fast. She was shooting for orgasm number three, something she never got before without a detachable shower head or her own fingers and a desperate memory of Cesar going down on her.

"You?" she gasped at Kyle after she did get that third orgasm. He was biting his lip and nodding, his breath stuttering in his chest. He looked gobsmacked, like he had no idea sex could feel that good, that it could steal his breath and wipe his mind clean of all thought. Poor guy. "Oh. Okay." She let herself fall forward then, tucking her head in the crook of his neck. "That was good."

"Really good," he echoed, his hands hesitantly moving to circle her back and trace her spine.

"Yeah. I like that," she murmured, pressing her lips to the underside of his jaw.

Kyle relaxed beneath her, and held her tightly. "I like this, too."

She smiled against his jaw. She'd have to move soon, before he got so soft that everything spilled out of the condom, but for the moment she felt too relaxed and tired.

Fuck fate, indeed.

***

Though Sarah almost expected things to be awkward the next morning, Pops merely looked at her in approval and Kyle was whistling as he made them both pancakes. His eyes lingered on her outfit for a bit longer than before, but he didn't hover next to her or insist that she come with him to the garage or some insipid crap like that. Pops had some kind of construction job that day, too, leaving her at home alone.

Time to do some research so she could have more ideas of what to do with Kyle. Research. Yes, that was all it was. Because he needed a place to belong and she was it. And because she was making it up as she went along, and had no idea what the hell she was doing. It was different with Cesar or the string of assholes between then and now; none of them mattered to history, so she never let herself get emotionally attached. Well, she had liked Cesar as a friend as well as a lover, but history had already forgotten he had ever existed. Kyle was important to history, and she could see herself getting very attached to him if she let herself.

Did women look at porn on the internet in this time? Pops had assured her that anything could be found online in this day and age, all she had to do was enter the keywords she wanted. She bit her lip and wondered what it would have looked like if she had gone to the public library and tried to go through the card catalog. Would she be able to find something on subordinate men in bed? Was there a term for that?

Yes, there was. And it was quite enlightening to see so much devoted to it on the internet.

Her lips quirked up in a smile as she scrolled through pages of forum discussions, pictures and video from sites full of home videos uploaded and professionally done porn available. This kind of research was far more fascinating than looking up the latest distributors of 50 caliber bullets that could rip through titanium alloy casing to destroy a terminator shell. That was useful, of course, but now was unnecessary. She had no intention of forgetting any of it, though; the internet was full of time travel paradox information, and _somehow_ Skynet would have to be developed in order for Pops to continue existing. For now, she wasn't going to dwell on those kinds of thoughts.

Figuring out how best to domme the hell out of Kyle? Feeding his service kink? That was looking to be very necessary.

The future was definitely interesting.

***

After the fifth asshole deciding that his number made a good tip at the bar, Sarah glared at Pops. "I need to get a better job. This sucks."

"You will need to complete schooling."

"I don't want to take a fucking GED to do it," she growled. "I know history, I can calculate distance and arcs for ballistics, I know enough chemistry for bomb making and I can hotwire a lot of shit. Hell, I've even done book reports for you, so I should have English down, and I can cuss out a ghetto gangbanger in English, Spanish _and_ Portuguese."

Pops didn't look terribly impressed. "Then I will get you papers and you can start at the community college in the fall semester."

"Three months away!"

"Unless you wish to start with online classes."

Sarah threw up her hands and groaned, impatient. "This is stupid. Why do I need to go to college to get a job? I didn't used to have to!"

"Times have changed," Pops told her, unperturbed. "Few unskilled jobs remain. There are factory jobs, service positions, waitressing, childcare, delivering newspapers—"

"Ugh. No, no, no. Nothing like that. I just need something to pay bills."

"We are financially secure," he replied. At her incredulous stare, he stretched his lips back in that grimace of a smile she had taught him when she was nine.

"What are you talking about?"

"There are over thirty years of investments in Los Angeles, and twenty-eight years of investments here in the San Francisco area. Rental properties, stocks, bonds, offshore accounts, some interest in local businesses. I have prepared accounts for you and for Kyle Reece."

Sarah blinked at him. "Um. So. I don't need to scramble to buy things?"

"No. You need to remain occupied, Sarah Connor, and attending school would be good for you," Pops declared.

Feeling as though she had slipped sideways into some kind of alternate dimension, she stared across the room at Kyle, who was polishing some bit of machinery and doing his level best to look uninterested in their conversation. He looked up at her continued stare and smiled warmly at her. "Whatever you want to do," he said, as if knowing she needed a nudge.

She blew out a breath. Time to take her own advice and figure out what kind of hobby she was interested in aside from ammunition and knife work.

"What kind of classes do they even have in college? Not some stupid Home Ec thing, is it? I remember Nina talking about that, and it's just so stupid."

"Home Ec?" Kyle asked, now obviously listening.

"Cooking. Sewing. Domestic crap they thought only girls had to know."

Kyle frowned. "But everyone would have to know how to cook or forage, to stitch up wounds and repair uniforms."

"Exactly," Sarah said with a nod. The approval seemed to put Kyle at ease, so she turned back to Pops. "It's not still like that, is it? I mean, it's been thirty years."

"It is not a requirement," Pops conceded. "But the strides that women have made in the interim are not as far as most would like. Culture and politics in terms of gender roles is always a tricky subject for most in power. They would not wish to concede any benefits."

Sarah scowled. "So how do _I_ fix it?"

"You're going to change the world?" Kyle asked, eyebrows lifted in surprise.

"I did it once, I sure as hell can do it again," Sarah replied, lifting her chin stubbornly.

His smile actually curled her toes inside her battered sneakers. "If anyone could, you could."

The moment was broken by Pops casually declaring she should take psychology, sociology and social work classes. "Understand the system that exists before you remake it."

Now she just had to wait three months to get things started, which she hated. Pops had his preternatural patience, and he was the one that filled out the applications and sent in the fees for her. Sarah plastered an insincere smile on her face at the bar, just to keep busy. Not all of the patrons were asshats, and she needed to get out of the house. There was only so many ways she could burn off her frustration, though finding Tae Bo and Muay Thai classes at the local gym helped to keep her in shape as well as active.

Taping up her hands for some classes had her thinking of using that on Kyle, and he eagerly knelt in front of her in his bedroom and let her tape his body into a folded position as she raked her nails over his exposed skin or took an empty fountain pen to sketch designs across his back. His breathing was ragged, his cock full and heavy on his bound thighs, and he kept his eyes to the floor until she gave him permission to look at her in a lace bra and matching panties.

Okay, some things about the future were fun. This was definitely one of them.

Breaking the tape apart when she was done with the drawing, Sarah soothed the welts with kisses and a cool lotion. She drew his hand between her legs and smiled magnanimously at him. "Feel how wet I am? See how happy you make me?"

Those were absolutely the right things to say, because he lit up and kissed her thoroughly, fingers exploring her before plunging inside her, shredding the delicate lace. Kyle was still all folded up in his kneeling position, making Sarah feel as though she was bigger than he was for once, power in how she curled around him, indicating without words that he should suck on a breast. Smart man, he picked up on that right away and laved her nipple with his tongue through the flimsy excuse of a bra.

Once she came, Sarah pushed his hand away and stood on shaky legs. "Condom. In me. Now."

As Kyle struggled to unroll the condom along his length, Sarah removed the wisps of shredded lace, some part of her quailing at the wasted money. But she turned and braced herself on the edge of the bed and reached behind her for Kyle. "This way."

"Oh," he breathed, a look of amazement and wonder on his face that soon gave way to pure joy. He filled her, and had to adjust a little to her lower height. It didn't quite work, so he had to pull out in order to lift her to kneeling on the edge of the bed, and then he could line up his cock and slide back in. He groaned along with Sarah, and tilted forward so that he could put his hands over hers, their fingers linked together.

Sarah was surprised by the move, but loved the way he covered her entire body and was still inside her, making shallow thrusts as he mouthed her shoulder. Kyle grunted and moaned, hands tight over hers. It didn't make her feel claustrophobic or pinned in place, but rather cherished and _needed._ When she clenched her inner muscles around his cock as he slid further in, Kyle groaned along her spine. Sarah grinned and did it again, tilting her head back a little. "God, Sarah," he moaned, his eyes fluttering shut. "Oh my God."

"Yeah?" she asked, unable to keep from teasing him.

He chuckled, lifting himself up off her back a bit. As much as she missed the feel of his skin on hers, that changed the angle of his cock, and he slid deeper into her. "This feels..."

"Lift up a bit more," she told him, though she didn't really want him to let go of her hands.

Kyle grasped her shoulders and let his hands slide down her back until he grasped her hips. From there, he slammed into her repeatedly, leaving her grasping at the sheets and pulling on them, pressing her face down to muffle her cries. She'd never left Cesar or the other nameless men in between have sex with her that way, as it seemed like too vulnerable a position, but it felt delicious and not vulnerable at all. At least, it didn't with Kyle. It probably would have with anyone else, but his hands on her were too reverent, too loving. He would never hurt her; it was far more likely that she would inadvertently hurt him.

She nearly screamed when she came, hands skidding across his sheets and her inner muscles clenching down hard on his cock. Kyle yelped in surprise, fingers tightening on her hips, and oh, but that felt good, too. Sarah let her body relax after a moment, propping herself up on her elbows. Kyle, not quite done yet, had kept thrusting, and she couldn't help but gasp as he hit that spot inside her again. Apparently, she wasn't quite done yet, either.

Sex with Kyle was a lot more fun than she thought it would be.

Afterward, rather than retreating to her bedroom to limit how attached she would be, Sarah cleaned herself up and let him curl around her naked body beneath his blankets. It was a warm cocoon in his arms, her body nearly engulfed by his. She felt protected, cherished, desirable and necessary. It was easy to close her eyes and imagine this as her future, their hands linked together around her, his warmth a comfort at night.

And even better, Kyle didn't have one of his screaming nightmares that night. He was utterly relaxed, amazed when he woke with his alarm. "That was the best sleep I ever had," he told her as she rubbed sleep out of her eyes. His boyish grin was infectious, and he touched her arms tenderly. "Thank you."

"It might not be like that every night."

"Every night I don't dream of fire bombs and machine guns is a good one."

Sarah cupped his cheek in one hand. "Then maybe I should share with you all the time," she said impulsively, lips curling into a soft smile.

He beamed at her, and leaned in to kiss her. She could feel love and passion in that kiss, the utter devotion in his touch. "I'd like that," he said against her mouth.

"You're working today?"

"Construction site on tenth," he confirmed as he pulled back, regret on his features.

"By the time you're back, my stuff will be in here," she told him.

He left the apartment with a light step and a goofy grin on his face. Pops looked at her with pride on his features, if he could feel such a thing. "This is proper," he told her.

"Jesus, Pops. Dads are supposed to want their little girls married, not shacked up."

"You have mated with Kyle Reese. This is as it should be."

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest and refrained from mentioning condoms and birth control, because she had no intention of having that discussion with him. "Then I guess I'm glad I have your approval, Pops."

He nodded briskly. "You have it. You are a fast learner."

"I've always had to be," she told him.

"That made it easier to teach you what you needed to know."

She smiled at him fondly, and leaned against him, giving him a hug. "Thanks, Pops."

He patted her back gently. Holding him tightly, Sarah couldn't help but smile; her life felt exactly the way it should have.

***  
***


	3. Switch Off The Sun

Sarah should have known that anything good in her life didn't stay forever, but she'd expected to have more than three weeks.

Sleeping in the same bed as Kyle, even if they didn't have sex, was comfortable. She liked how his larger body curled around her, his arms tight and warm. They could cuddle, talk about guns or weaponry, how the food was different than what Kyle was used to. Teasing him a little by wiggling her ass against his crotch made them both smile, and it didn't always turn into sex. But if it did, she enjoyed riding him to exhaustion. That helped her sleep deeply at night, no more worries about what to do with her future. It possibly had her sleeping _too_ deeply, and he certainly was, too. Sarah didn't think that was a problem, but apparently it had been something that worried Kyle a lot.

She didn't realize that until he struggled through a nightmare he couldn't wake from. His arms around her tightened painfully, and the shock woke her up. She didn't know what it was at first, but her arms were compressed against her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Sarah gasped out his name, but Kyle didn't seem to hear it. "Kyle!" she rasped, just as his fingers reached up for her neck. She scrabbled at his arms, starting to get frightened. She survived the machines trying to kill her, and now she wouldn't survive this. How was that fair?

It wasn't, and Sarah certainly knew that. So she didn't always fight fair, either.

The back of her head slammed into his chest, then she dug her heels into his knees and pushed up, jamming her head into the underside of his jaw. The breath was knocked out of him, and she thought perhaps his grunt sounded like he was waking up. For good measure, she knocked into his jaw again; that would hurt like a motherfucker but not mark him up too much. The back of a skull hitting his lip would leave it swollen for a few days. Not that she knew that from personal experience, no, not at all.

Kyle's arms loosened, and as soon as they did, Sarah pushed out with a sweeping gesture and launched herself off of his thighs. That meant banging into his chin again, and the top of her skull was sore from the bone on bone collisions. Still, she didn't even yelp as she pitched forward off the edge of the bed and hit the floor. For all that she had warned Pops to leave them alone if the bedroom door was closed, any scream she made would bring Pops to the bedroom door if he was in the apartment, and this already awkward situation would become even more horrifically uncomfortable. Not because she was completely naked and so was Kyle, but because Pops would likely grab Kyle by the throat, lift him off his feet, toss him across the room, glower and threaten to kill him before asking what had happened.

Not that she knew _that_ from personal experience, either.

She hadn't liked that boyfriend much anyway. Or that rundown neighborhood they had lived in.

Sarah crouched on the ground, looking up over the edge of the bed to gauge Kyle's current mental state. She was thinking that it must have been some whopper of a nightmare, but she didn't have anything to reference it to. He tended to keep mum about what he had seen, and didn't confide in Pops either.

Eyes wild and terrified, Kyle was crouched on the bed in a similar pose as Sarah. His left hand was clenched and on the bed, but still looked tense and poised to strike. His right hand was raised, hand open, as if waiting to slap or push or yank. Every muscled plane of his body was coiled and ready to spring, and the look of confusion on his face when he realized he was in a bedroom and not a battlefield was heartbreaking.

Even worse was seeing the contrition in his expression when he realized who he would have attacked in his sleep, and he jerked around in a panic looking for her. "Oh God, oh God," he panted, starting to scrabble across the bed at her, foot slipping on the twisted sheets. "Oh, Sarah, God, I couldn't—I didn't—It wasn't you, I wasn't fighting you, I thought it was a machine, I thought they trapped me again—"

Her eyes wandered to the tattoo on his arm, the mark of the concentration camps. Work camps, he had said, but she had read enough history to know what that really meant. It had made no sense to her why machines bent on eradicating humanity would have work camps of humans, or what they would actually need humans for. Pops never explained it to her, no matter how often she had demanded it, saying she was better off not knowing.

Seeing Kyle's terror, maybe he was right about that after all.

"What the hell happened?" Sarah asked brusquely.

 _Nice one,_ she berated herself as soon as she saw his stricken expression.

"I didn't want—Please believe me, I'd never hurt you. Please, God, Sarah, don't hate me, I didn't mean to do anything to you!"

The words tripped over each other, staccato rhythm of panic flavoring each syllable. Kyle scrabbled forward, as if he had forgotten how to untangle himself from sheets, reaching for her with desperate eyes. "Please, Sarah, you're not hurt, are you?" he asked, pleading with her to answer him.

Sarah blinked; she hadn't consciously tried to stay silent, she just felt so overwhelmed with knowing that Kyle was this dreadfully broken. No, that wasn't right, either. She knew it in a logical sense, knew that was why he needed her to give him directions and give him a sense of purpose. But she had chalked it up to a future without plans, not knowing what to do with his instincts to run and fight. Adrenaline had him standing still, frozen rabbit in the plains, the deer in the headlights.

"I'm fine." Her voice sounded a little rough at first, so she cleared her throat and gave him a decisive stare. "I'm fine. I'm not hurt."

Though for a moment, she had thought he would hurt her. For a moment, she had been eleven and running down the maze of alleys in the projects, hoping she would make it over to Cesar or Javier before the random stranger chasing her down would catch her. Her heart still had the rapid jackhammer rhythm in her chest, and her blood rushed past her ears in a cacophony of sound that drowned out his desperate pleas.

"...to be true. I know I'm not good enough. You don't have to protect me from that. I'm a soldier, I've taken hits before. I know how to take it."

"The hell are you talking about?" Sarah demanded, covering up her own memories and helpless feelings with anger. Anger was good. It was cleansing, gave her energy, gave her purpose. She could use it as a weapon. Anger was fantastic defense, as it put others on the defense and left her on the offensive.

"Don't lie about any injuries," he continued, frowning at her. "I already know this needs to stop, I can't put you at risk."

"Shut up, Reese," Sarah said, bringing her hands to her temples. He kept right on sputtering his apologies, reaching for her with that same pleading expression on his face. When would he start making sense? Her head hurt, and she didn't have time to deal with a fragile male ego.

"God, just shut up. My head hurts, I can't pay attention," Sarah blurted, rubbing at her temples. It was a throbbing across the top of her head from where she had hit his jaw, but also the tension from trying to figure out what should happen next. It felt like she was missing something huge, pieces of herself lost somewhere, and she _loathed_ that feeling.

Kyle's mouth snapped shut, and Sarah pulled her lips together tight. She should've been nicer about it, but now it was too late to take the words back.

"I hurt you," he said, rocking back and sitting on his ass, legs sprawled out in front of him. He grabbed his arms, as if he could constrict his upper body into a tighter ball, and Sarah caught the flash of the tattoo again. "We'll need to make sure you don't fall asleep, check you every two hours. No coffee, no alcohol, no—"

"It's not a concussion," Sarah snapped. "You had a nightmare, Reese. It happens."

The haunted look on his face stopped her from saying more. "Nightmares don't make me attack people. I've been in close quarters before. I never attacked anyone, let alone anyone that really mattered to me."

"Reese..."

He suddenly unwrapped his arms and pushed himself up off the bed. "I need to get out of here."

"Kyle!" Sarah cried, alarmed enough to stand up and reach for him. "I'm fine, it's nothing! I got worse scrapes in training!"

That didn't help, and she couldn't figure out why it didn't. He was barreling out of the room, not even getting dressed or grabbing the sheet to cover himself up. Sarah didn't even think about it either, to be honest, but Pops merely looked up at them both from the kitchen with a bemused expression. "I did not think you would mate with an audience," he remarked.

"Oh my God!" Kyle yelped, then barreled back into the bedroom. This time he was embarrassed, not stricken. Sarah supposed that was an improvement.

"Stop talking about mating, Pops!" Sarah shot at him, annoyed. She marched back into the bedroom with as much grace as she could muster, but Kyle studiously avoiding looking at her naked body didn't help.

"You can't stay in here with me, Sarah," Kyle said, turning his suffering expression toward her before he started hunting for his discarded clothes. "It's not safe anymore. I can't believe I let my guard down, that I thought it might actually be okay. But it's not okay," he cried, yanking his underwear off the floor and shaking it as if it had done him a personal injury. "I'm supposed to protect you! I'm supposed to help you!"

"You do!"

"Yeah, right," Kyle said bitterly. "I still stand there and stare up at the sun like a moron. I can't handle grocery shopping in the afternoon so I have to go to the corner store at three am like a loser, and I _still_ get overwhelmed by it. I can cook. I can clean. I can make you come. I can pretend I'm comfortable. That's about it."

"Jesus, Reese," Sarah began, shaking her head in dismay. "That's not all you're good for."

"Yes, it is." He shot her a desperate look, then sat down heavily on the bed to yank his underwear back on. "Half the guys at work know what it's like. That crawling feeling like shit is about to happen, but nothing ever does. Knowing something bad is coming, that something horrible is out there, but not being able to see it."

"I know how that feels," Sarah whispered.

"I still see how they all died, Sarah. My unit, when we got captured. When we got thrown into the work camp. They didn't bother to hide the experiments from us. They figured we'd all die sooner or later, what was the point?"

She felt faint at _experiments,_ because statements alluded to like that never ended well, and the haunted, _hunted_ expression on his face was terrible to see. What kind of atrocities had he lived through? What did he think he had to protect her from?

"Jesus, Reese. It's not happening. It's not real anymore."

"It is to me! I _can't stop thinking about it,_ and I have to, but I can't. I can't bring you through it with me. No matter how much it will kill me inside, it's better that you fall in love with someone else. You need to be kept safe, even if it's from me."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

"I always knew whoever you loved would have to be special. I knew it couldn't be me," Kyle said, heartbroken gaze fixated on her. "But I loved you anyway. I came back anyway, even though I knew it couldn't have ever been me. These weeks have been more than I ever thought I would deserve."

"No, you've got it backward—"

"John might have said I was his father, but not how it counts. I know that. I'm not capable of producing a man like that." His voice almost broke. "How can I, when I can't even keep you safe from me? When you go out every night to work and you're constantly at risk, and I can't be there to help you?"

Sarah sat down beside him as he bowed his head in shame. "Reese," she said, trying to get his attention. When that didn't work, she sighed. _"Kyle._ You're a wonderful man, and I know you'd be a damn good father to some kid someday."

"How do you know? When all I know is how to stay alive when the machines come?"

"That's bullshit," she snapped. "You have to be good to survive, yeah, but you're smart, too. I'm sure if you wanted to get into some school here, you could. This is the nightmare talking, Reese. I know you well enough to know that you're a good man."

"A good man?" Kyle scoffed, shaking his head. "No. Good men protect the ones they care about, not hurt them. Good men don't come up with shitty excuses why they do the things they do. Good men will get out of the way of someone else's happiness, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that when the time comes."

"What are you talking about?"

The expression on his face when he looked at her was utterly devastated. "We've only delayed the inevitable, you know. Skynet's gone. Genisys is gone. But _something_ rises in its place, and _someone_ becomes John's father. You've made it clear it's not going to be me, as nice as this is," he said, gesturing between them. "I know I don't mean the same to you as you mean to me. I've always known that's how it's going to be. I didn't think it was going to hurt this much, though."

Sarah grasped Kyle's hand. "It's not like that, Kyle," she said, voice gentle. Using his first name usually calmed him, but he was still agitated. "Nobody's going to be John's father. There isn't going to be a John Connor anymore. I'm making sure of that. We don't need John. The precursor to the machines was stopped."

"Paradox," Kyle said gently, removing his hand from hers. "Time travel is a bitch," he told her humorlessly, "but it always works out. Someone has to develop the tech for time travel, or everything will unravel. Reality hasn't yet, so someone at some point develops time travel. Someone develops the AI that creates the machines. Someone starts the war between machines and humans. It just hasn't happened yet, but it will."

"Not in our lifetimes. We stopped it."

"We delayed it." He looked at her intently, then away. "If you're sure you're not going to be John Connor's mother, if I'm not the father, then someone else is going to be, and that someone else isn't going to be prepared. So I've failed in saving the past."

"You're being too hard on yourself."

"No, I'm not. I've worked it all out," he told her in a toneless voice. "I should've known the peace couldn't last. The machines are relentless."

Sarah looked at him in horror; she had never thought that his quiet at the dinner table or late at night with his arms around her that he castigated himself so harshly. He recoiled from her expression, and she belatedly realized that he must think she was horrified _by him._ "You can't think this way," she said, scrambling forward as he started to get up. "Reese, this isn't your fault. You're not inviting any paradox or anything like that. Stop thinking this way. Just stop, it isn't true, it isn't real."

"I can't, Sarah," he said, shaking his head and turning away from her. "Not even for you."

She wanted to grab him and shake him. Could she order him to stop? Domme the hell out of him until he simply stopped thinking like this?

"Where are you going?" she demanded. "You can't leave like this."

Kyle froze, just as she hoped he would, but tension still riddled his frame. Sarah got in front of him and put her hands on his waist. "Kyle," she said in a gentler tone. "You don't have to do this alone. Don't worry about this alone. Isn't that the point of being here? That you're not alone anymore, that you don't have to struggle so hard?"

"My job is to keep you safe, Sarah."

"The machines are gone—"

"And every day you put yourself into situations I can't help you with. I can't help you when someone makes a comment at the bar or tries to hit on you. It hurts to watch when I'm there, wondering which one you're going to fall for."

"I come home to _you_ every night."

"And you don't love me, not like that."

"Reese..."

"No, you don't have to lie to make me feel better. I know," he said, gently removing her hands from his body. He swallowed painfully and tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace, as if he was struggling not to cry. "I've made my peace with it."

Sarah pushed him backward so that he had to sit down on the bed again, putting them at eye level. She had no idea what she was going to say to him to ease the fears he had, because she didn't have the same level of devotion that he had for her. It would be cruel to lie about that, and he would know if she did.

"I do care about you, Kyle. It's not what you feel, it's not what you want, but that doesn't mean that it isn't real. That doesn't mean that you don't matter to me." She put her hands on his shoulders in a steadying motion, even though he wasn't swaying. "You keep me safe, and I trust you with my life. That's more than I can say about _anyone_ else I've ever known but Pops. I think that's more important."

His expression was still sad, though its edges softened a bit. "Thank you for trusting me."

"I think I trust you more than you trust yourself," Sarah said, tightening her grip on his shoulders and trying to smile at him. "You would never hurt me. I know that. Tonight was an accident, Kyle. An _accident."_

"And I won't repeat it. We'll move your stuff back into your room—"

"No!" Sarah cried, panic suddenly curdling in her stomach. She didn't want to sleep alone anymore, didn't want to curl up in an empty, cold bed and wonder how she was going to make it through another night alone. "I sleep better with you with me."

Kyle's shoulders slumped a little, a defeated posture that Sarah hated to see. "This is a disaster waiting to happen, Sarah," he warned.

But it wasn't a no, so she was going to seize the opportunity.

Sarah leaned in and kissed him, soft and sweet. "We'll make it work," she said against his mouth, and moved to straddle him. Wrapping her arms around his torso, she laid her head down against his shoulder. "Compromise, right? That's all relationships really are. We just have to figure out what we need to do to make it work."

"I'd really like it if you didn't work at that bar. I don't like the feeling I get when I'm in there."

She sighed and kissed his neck. "I'll think about it."

***

Sarah knew that Pops was indifferent to whatever job she had, but Kyle was distinctly troubled by the bartending. Though he knew logically that she could handle herself, he was fixated on her safety. He hated how little and delicate it made her look, how many stares she had to endure. She was used to that, and he possibly didn't realize it. Being a petite and pretty woman in the world meant that men would always ogle and stare as if it was their right. Douchebags always thought they were God's gift to women and the men felt they were sex on legs, but it was easy to tune out the droning voices. If they were really obnoxious, the thought of testing her knife on their insides brought a vicious smile to her face that had them backing off.

Kyle slouched in the back of the bar, nursing a beer and a plate full of chili fries. Occasionally he frowned, looking off into the distance, then back down at the plate. Sarah doubted they were offending him in some way, and thought that maybe it was the obnoxious regulars at the bar that bothered him. She could ignore them and flash her smiles at the nicer patrons that tipped well or joked around and helped time pass.

"Heya, Billy," she called out as a regular walked in and greeted a few others seated at tables and watching the football game on TV's placed around the space. "Usual?"

Billy was a construction worker in a different company than the one that had hired Kyle. He was in his mid twenties, and his dusky skin tone was likely due to mixed race heritage. His hair was tightly curled and black, his eyes were brown, and he walked with a swagger born of confidence and easy strength. He grinned at Sarah. "Sure thing, doll. Those asswipes down there treating you right?" he teased, nodding toward the obnoxious regulars seated at the other end of the bar. One of them shot a middle finger at Billy.

"What do you think?" Sarah scoffed, pulling out a stein and drawing the beer off the tap. "Same old, same old. How 'bout you?"

He laughed easily as he sank down onto a bar stool and reached for his wallet. "Long. Just a long ass day, and I am so glad my work week is over." He shook his head and drew out the money to pay Sarah. "But hey. I'm here, and so are you." He grinned at Sarah, and she smiled back fondly as she grabbed the money.

Kyle slouched in his seat and glowered deeply at his fries and took a pull off his longneck, still scowling. He pushed the fries about on his plate with a sour look, but didn't say a word.

Sarah went through the rest of her shift, mixing a few drinks and pouring out beers. She dropped another longneck in front of Kyle when his was empty; she winked when he started in surprise that she noticed it. "Don't worry. I'll take care of you," she said with a smile.

"Yeah. That you do," he replied, finally digging into his cold fries.

"I'll see ya later, hon," Billy said when he finally pushed back from the bar. His first step wobbled a bit, and Sarah frowned at him. "No, really, hon, I can drive."

"Bullshit," Sarah snapped. "Gimme your keys," she said, holding out her hand. "You got five beers and that Jaeger bomb that Fred bought you, don't think I didn't count it. Your usual limit's three, and even that's pushing it. Gimme the keys."

Billy sighed and dug them out of his pocket. "Shit. Didn't wanna get your mothering up."

"I'm nobody's mother," she replied, grasping the keys and hanging them up near the register with a frown. "Definitely not yours. But if you wanna walk in this place and have me pull a beer for you, you better live to get home."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," he snarked, taking another staggering step.

Sarah tagged his keys and shook her head. "Smartass," she muttered with a smile. "I'll call the cab, you wait for it."

He obliged, and sat at a table near the door. The short walk there from the bar wasn't all that straight, and Billy tolerated the good natured jibes from other regulars. Sarah shoved him out of the door when the cab arrived, and Billy kissed her cheek in thanks.

While Sarah didn't think much of it, Kyle was fixated on that. He was surly when they walked home after the end of her shift, hands tightly clenched. "What the hell is your problem?" she asked. "You barely said anything to me."

"What do you need me for?" Kyle returned irritably.

Stopping short to look at him, Sarah frowned. "The hell? I know you're not drunk off your ass, because you _never_ get that way. So what's the deal, here?"

"You could have anyone you want," Kyle began with a miserable expression. "You're just settling if you stay with me."

Only able to blink at him in open-mouthed surprise, Sarah couldn't wrap her head around it. "I have no idea where this is coming from," she said finally.

"You could be with anyone. Love anyone. Fate's over, right? Isn't that what you wanted?"

"I am way too sober for this kind of talk," Sarah grumped, shaking her head and starting to walk toward the apartment again.

"Maybe you don't think it needs to be said," Kyle continued doggedly, following her. "But I need to. I'll walk away, you know. Whoever you care for, I won't get in the way. I want you to know that. You're not stuck with me if you don't want to be."

Sarah stopped short again, and Kyle nearly crashed into her. "Have you ever thought that maybe _you_ aren't stuck with _me?"_

Kyle looked startled by that. "What?"

"You had all these stories about me. But this is a future that's all new. You don't have to stay here, you know. You can go anywhere you want to. That other Kyle Reese won't grow up hearing about the great and holy Sarah Connor and won't love me. He'll get married to someone else, have a bunch of kids and have a normal life. Have you thought about that? You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. So you could go out into the world and fall in love with some girl that deserves you." Sarah put her hand on his chest. "You can do what you want, Reese. You don't have to listen to me anymore."

He closed his hand over hers, pressing it against him. "But I want to. I want to be here with you. I want _you,_ Sarah. You're all I ever wanted."

"I don't think you even know what you want."

"I want _you,"_ he repeated earnestly.

Sarah let out a slow breath and started walking back to the apartment, not believing it for a moment. "You haven't let yourself meet anyone else," she said as she got into the building. Kyle was fast on her heels, and climbed the stairs behind her. His eyes darted everywhere, looking for exits and things hiding in shadows. What? Did he think she wouldn't do that for herself? _Come on now,_ she wanted to say to him, _I'm no amateur._

Kyle checked the locks behind her as he usually did, but tonight it was irritating instead of a little endearing. "I know how to keep myself safe, Reese," she insisted, voice hard. "I know what I need to do. I don't think you ever stopped to wonder what _you_ need."

"I need you," he insisted. Stubborn bastard.

"Why? What is it about me?" Sarah demanded, jaw set and eyes flashing. "Why am I the special one? Because I'm the savior's mother? I disappear from history. I die and I'm nothing more than a footnote. I'm just a—"

Grabbing her face in his hands, Kyle kissed her deeply. Her sharp intake of breath let his tongue touch her parted lips, dart inside and run along the tops of her lower teeth. "You are Sarah Connor," Kyle growled against her mouth when he had to breathe. "You are strong, determined, skilled and confident. You are everything you have to be, and that's what I want."

"You know what John told you. It was about the other version of me, if he even told you anything true," she scoffed.

"I know you now. It's not just stories, Sarah. I feel close to you. I _trust_ you. I've got your back, and I will always keep you safe."

Before she could reply, he kissed her again, hard and passionate, hands sliding down the sides of her neck to her shoulders and back. "I want _you,_ Sarah. All of you. Every last piece you think is awful, everything you don't acknowledge is good."

"Reese," she began in a warning tone as his mouth moved to her jaw and neck.

Picking her up in his arms, he grinned at her startled expression. "I chose you, Sarah, I told you, and I don't need to meet someone else to know that. You're the one for me. I'll do what it takes to be the one you choose, if I can, so you won't need someone else."

Oh dear God, he was jealous of the drunken sots at the bar.

He carried her to the bedroom as she tried to think of something to say to him that didn't sound condescending as all hell. She couldn't think of it, and didn't want to hurt his feelings that way. She was a bitch, but she wasn't _that_ cruel. Right?

Kyle nuzzled the hollow between her collarbones and gently laid her down on the bed. "You don't have to do this," Sarah started to say.

"I know. I want to."

She opened her mouth but he kissed her again, all tongue and teeth and artless desire, and she could feel how desperate he was to show her what she meant to him. Sarah cupped his face in her hands, letting her eyes fall shut. "Kyle," she murmured.

He stripped her naked and fixed his mouth on her skin as it was exposed. Sarah kept her eyes closed, fingers tangled in his hair. It was getting long, and she supposed she should tell him to get a haircut. Unless he liked it longer and kept it short before for military standards. Sarah rather liked seeing this confident part of him; she hadn't seen much of this side at all, and tended to think of him as a lost puppy rather than a man with needs beyond someone else's control. Kyle was definitely not a puppy, especially as he sucked and fondled her breasts, fingers skimming down the sides of her torso to stroke her. "You gonna fuck me?" she asked breathlessly.

Something glittered in his eyes, and she couldn't place the emotion. "No, Sarah," he said, his voice a low growl of passion. "I'm gonna make love to you."

He moved over her, a presence that filled her senses. For a moment, she could see the confidence and strength he had to have to survive the machines. The intense look on his face was fixed on her, and he was utterly determined to show her how he felt.

It was kind of nice to let go, to have him direct what would happen next. Maybe that was the draw for Kyle, that someone else was in control, that she didn't have to worry about what would be, that she could place her complete trust in someone else and know she would be all right. It was intoxicating, so she wrapped her arms around him as he kissed her breathless.

Kyle shifted just enough to roll a condom on, and he grinned at her. No hesitance at all as he lifted her thighs around his waist and positioned his cock at her entrance. Sarah sighed contentedly as he slid inside her, filling her up slowly. Everything was slower than usual, though the adoration was still in his eyes as he looked at her. He reached down and linked his hands with hers, pushing them down into the bed on either side of her head, and shifted his hips as he drove in deeper. Sarah gasped at the sensation, moaning. Kyle's grin changed slightly, pleasure and pride and such utter devotion. It was almost heartbreaking to see it, to see how thoroughly he had woven himself into her life, how much he _needed_ her.

Not willing to properly clean up afterward, Kyle just dropped the used condom on the floor on top of his strewn clothes. He laid on top of her, wrapping himself around her as if he was a human blanket, and nuzzled her neck. Without words, he was telling her he loved her, he wanted her with him, he would never leave.

Sarah didn't think about why that didn't scare her as much as it should have.

***  
***


	4. Choking On Thin Air

Sarah caught sight of Kyle on one of his construction jobs. It wasn't stalking, not exactly; she had errands to run, and his latest site was on the way to the library. She had books to return regarding GED testing, just so she wouldn't feel like a complete fool when she started taking college classes. There hadn't been any need for formal schooling before, after all, as it would just keep her away from Pops for eight or nine hours a day, and it wouldn't teach her any of the shit she had actually needed to know. She got all the rudimentary things she needed to know about academics, and taking the tests in the review books now told her that she wouldn't have done too badly if she had gone to high school.

Her other nineteen year old self had probably been a waitress just to pass the time between classes. Kyle hadn't known what she would have been if the terminator hadn't come for her the first time around in 1984. Would she have been an artist? A teacher? A nurse? Something soft and comforting and normal?

No point thinking about it, since that was a future that would never be.

Kyle was sitting next to two other beefy looking guys, black lined tattoos easily visible on their dark skin. Not gang symbols as far as she knew, but distance and a pulled down sleeve obscured most of the image. Most gang symbols would've been on the inside of the forearm or on the neck, easily visible and meant to intimidate. Though the two guys next to Kyle were heavy muscles and built, their expressions were friendly and welcoming. One gestured widely, stopping as he smiled, and Kyle laughed at whatever he said.

Wait, Kyle laughed?

She could get chuckles and wry smiles, but couldn't recall really making him laugh. She couldn't think of anything that she could do that would make him happy like that. He had never smiled or laughed that way when talking of his future. No, those were always grim, somber looks, flashes of fear and startled expressions when he realized he wasn't reliving it. He had comrades and fellow soldiers in his future, the past that would never happen. Had he ever had friends like these two had to be?

One tapped him on the back, and he didn't startle much. The man noticed it and nodded toward the mp3 player on the bench next to him. Kyle nodded and sighed wearily, then hooked the wire under his shirt, putting the earbuds into his ears. Another nod and short statement to the two men, then he touched the button on the player to make it start, and then he headed back to the main construction area. Break over, then.

These were good friends, then. They knew about how twitchy he could be, how chills could roll down his spine when he remembered something bad. Maybe they didn't know what caused his nightmares, why he occasionally shouted in terror at night, why she had to cradle him and rock him back to sleep, his tears hot on her skin. Without knowing the details, they still looked out for him in ways that they could, and it made her glad that he had found them.

As Sarah watched him work, he didn't talk much with anyone, even the two men that seemed to be his close friends. She frowned a little, wondering why he was keeping himself so distant when he didn't have to; plenty of the other construction workers talked or shouted at each other as they worked, joked and jibed with each other.

She could see tension in his shoulders. Was there something that was being triggered? Was he experiencing some horror all over again?

Clenching her hands into fists, she headed to the library. She couldn't help him with this, not here and now, and she couldn't stop him from remembering whatever horrors he had experienced. It had happened to him, even if it never would again, and she knew full well how some things never really left.

They all carried scars thanks to Skynet and Genisys.

Sarah lost herself in the stacks of the library, not sure what else to do with herself. There was nothing she wanted to read, nothing she wanted to learn, no point to this existence that she could see. The lack of planning for _after_ Skynet's destruction was glaringly obvious now. She never made contingency plans, so she was adrift.

Well, college should fix that. Hopefully.

She went to her Muay Thai class and beat the everloving shit out of the bag under the watchful eye of her trainer, working the frustration out. It would be so much easier if she was a machine herself, if there wasn't that cloying hopelessness creeping along her spine, the fluttering of her heart and the pulsing fear that she wasn't good enough.

Panting, Sarah bent over after the class and tried to catch her breath. Her trainer appeared to be concerned, maybe because her technique was sloppy today. Too much emotion, not enough grace for the follow through. The burden of disappointment was heavy, but she could bear it. She had for so long that it was a familiar weight. It was almost comfortable to shoulder it again, to feel it settle back onto her skin.

While at work, she couldn't help but remember Kyle's concern about her safety there. She brushed it off most of the time, since the regulars knew her. Billy teased her here and there, and maybe Jack did, too. Then again, Jack flirted with _everyone_ at the bar, drunk or sober, so there was no way to really take him seriously. Fred was almost as old as Pops looked, and just liked to joke around and feel like he had friends; Sarah knew there was no one at home for him in his apartment, not even a pet. Still, the old man was fiercely proud of the friends he made at the bar, and dutifully bought shots for birthdays and holidays and any special events in their lives, so she made it a point to remember Fred's birthday and buy him a shot in return. She knew how it went with gruff old men in bars by now. These guys weren't the ones that Kyle ever had to be concerned about.

Okay, maybe there were some people who ogled her a little too much. Or thought it was cute leaving their phone numbers as tips. Or would order a sex on the beach _just because_ and leer at her. Since there was the bar in between them, at least she didn't get groped or have her ass slapped by one of those losers.

If any of that happened while Kyle was around, he looked apoplectic and damn near ready to murder the asshole. Sarah would have to flick her eyes at him in their prearranged _back off_ signal, if only to keep him out of trouble. She could handle herself. This was something she knew by now. She looked young, but she felt far older than her years and never really recalled what it was like to be innocent.

"This isn't good for you," Kyle growled periodically on their walks home. "Those guys are dangerous, I've seen the type before."

"So have I," Sarah snapped in reply.

Sometimes she simply ignored what Kyle said, sometimes she would egg him on. In his more jealous moments, he would pin her to the wall of the apartment and kiss her breathless. Then he would strip her to the skin and tell her with his hands and lips and tongue how important she was to him. In those moments, she felt less like an idiot and more like someone who was loved and cherished and truly significant. It wasn't fate making her that way, it was because she actually mattered. She had a soul of her own.

But at the same time, she hung on to the job just to be contrary. She didn't want to be told what to do. No one could make her do anything. Even the fate proscribed to her wasn't coming to pass, because _she was in control, dammit._

It took being followed by a creeper from the bar to make Sarah finally quit. She handled herself well with said creeper, knocking him out easily and quickly, leaving him in the alley he hoped to ambush her in. Just to be spiteful, she stole his wallet and chucked it in the garbage after stealing the cash. No point in letting it go to waste, and she could always donate it to a domestic violence center. How was that for irony?

"You are not required to obtain employment, Sarah Connor," Pops told her evenly once she got home. Her hair was in disarray, and she was short of breath despite the relatively short walk, so it had been impossible not to tell him and Kyle. "It was merely to pass the time."

"I _knew_ it was a bad idea," Kyle grumbled.

"Oh?" Sarah asked, irritated. "Because I'm a little girl and can't handle myself? I asked for it?"

"No!" Kyle cried, affronted. "Because guys in bars are assholes and I can't be there with you all the time to watch your six!"

"I handled it."

"Tonight. But when there's more than one? You can't see behind you, you don't have eyes behind your head." He raked his hands through his hair in an agitated manner. "I can't... If anything happened to you, I don't know how I'd survive it."

"You're not my father," Sarah snarled. "That's how you're acting, you know that, right? Like you're the parent and I'm some dumbass kid that doesn't know any better. But I _do_ know better, because machines fucking blew up my house and my parents and I stopped being a kid!"

Kyle gave her a stricken look. "No, it's not like that, Sarah. You're as strong as any soldier I ever fought with, but even we knew that we couldn't go it alone. You need someone at your back, you need protection to stay alive."

"I'm not a soldier."

"Sarah—"

Her expression didn't change. "This isn't healthy, Reese."

"Kyle Reese is devoted to your well-being," Pops told Sarah.

"Stay out of it, Pops."

"It is in your best interest to make use of all allies," Pops replied.

"Yeah," Kyle echoed, nodding at Pops. "You can handle yourself as well as any soldier I fought with. But you only have so many resources, and they can be overwhelmed."

"I'm not a soldier!"

"That's why I worry!" Kyle responded desperately.

"I took care of myself before you got here. I'm not helpless. I'm not some damsel in distress like you were told I'd be. I will _never_ be that kind of girl."

"And I love that about you—"

"You love stories told to you by someone that turned out to be a psychopathic madman!" Sarah screeched, eyes wide with disbelief.

Kyle looked so hurt by that, Sarah almost regretted her words. Almost.

"He used you, Reese," Sarah continued mercilessly. "He manipulated you. Manipulated _everyone._ Tried to do the same with me, and I'm his mother. What the hell kind of savior makes friends with the guy that he has to send back to die without even letting him know it was a suicide mission?"

"I'm not having this conversation," Kyle told her, voice cold.

"No, you need to hear it," Sarah said.

Kyle attempted to brush past her, jaw firm, but a nod from Sarah had Pops grasping his shoulder to keep him in place. "You must listen to Sarah Connor," he told Kyle.

But Kyle shook his head. "I _lived_ it. I know what happened, I know John was a good man. What you saw wasn't the John I knew. He was infected by Skynet."

"The John you knew still sent you here to die."

"Our missions always carry risk—"

"Which makes him no better than the machines," Sarah continued.

His glower was fierce, and something in Sarah quailed at breaking his illusions this way. Was she a horrible person for doing this? Probably, but she'd never pretended to be a saint. Kyle just saw her that way.

"Sacrificing people for the greater good, just because you can, just because you convinced people that you're right—"

"John knew the machines were coming. He saved us from Judgment Day, brought us out of the work camps, prevented genocide. We'd do _anything_ for him—"

"That's my point, Reese. You'd do anything, even die, just because he said so, just because he would say it's right. You have no real choice in it!"

"Of course I chose for myself!"

"Oh, come on, Reese. You'd lay down your life for John. You need to follow orders _so badly_ and don't know what to do if you're not told."

Yanking himself away from Pops, Kyle glared at Sarah. "That's low. Don't bring what we do—"

"It's _everything,_ Reese. You were a soldier. You took orders—"

"It was _war,_ Sarah."

"And we're not at war now, Reese. You keep acting like you are."

"You're the same way. Like all the warriors I trained with."

"We're _not_ at war. Stand down, _Reese."_

_"I can't!"_

"We're not at war," Sarah repeated. "We're done. _We're done._ John may have been a good leader, but he was a shitty person and he _wasn't_ your friend. Friends don't set each other up to die."

Something painful was in Kyle's gaze. "It wasn't like that."

"You died within _two days_ of coming back. He would've known that. I would've told him. So he _knew_ you didn't survive it. We had _two days_ in that other reality, Reese. You might not have known it, but he did. He sent you on a suicide mission without telling you that it was. That's fucked up."

Pops gave Sarah a disapproving look. "This is nonproductive."

"John was fucked up and selfish, and an all around shitty human being. I'm glad he's gone, because I don't want him around you anymore. I don't want him telling you to do stupid ass shit. I might tell you what to do, but I don't expect you to put yourself at risk. I don't expect you to die for me. I _don't_ want you to die for me. And I hate that you would without question."

"I would because I love you!"

"Because he made you! It wasn't your choice!"

"Of course it was!"

"He manipulated you into it!"

"No!" Kyle's gaze was intense, making Sarah feel terrible for starting this conversation. "I love you. He didn't make me love you. It happened here—"

"You idolized me before you even met me," Sarah interrupted, ignoring Pops' disapproving scowl at her. "You fell in love with the idea of me, not me. You can't love someone you don't know, and I'm not the kind of girl men want to keep. I'm good for a fuck, I know that. I'm no mother Mary with a halo."

"That's not how I see you," Kyle growled fiercely. "You protect people you care about. You survive. That's all worthwhile." He grasped Sarah's arms. "You're perfect, Sarah. You're everything I ever wanted. _You,_ not stories. Not the Sarah I thought I was going to meet, but _you."_

"Oh, please," Sarah scoffed, an angry edge to her voice. "You think I'm any kind of good? You went back in time wanting to fuck your best friend's mother? Do you think that's healthy? Do you think he really gave a shit about _you_ or do you think maybe he just wanted to be sure that he was born?!"

"Both of you need to participate in local activities," Pops declared in the stunned silence. "Both of you need to spend time outside of this home."

"We don't know anyone outside of work, Pops," Sarah told him, irritated.

"Exactly. Humans are social creatures. You don't have the friend community you used to."

"My friends were _gangbangers,_ Pops."

"And Kyle Reese's were soldiers." Pops appeared unconcerned by Sarah's incredulous statement. "Similar function, if unnecessary for our current living parameters. You both need companions to suit your current situation, likely none that live here."

"Are you saying we need new friends?" Kyle sputtered.

"Affirmative."

"This entire conversation is surreal," Sarah grumbled.

"Fuck this," Kyle muttered. "I'm going to bed. _Alone."_

"I'm not fucking you tonight anyway," Sarah told him, grimacing. "That's just gross now."

That was probably too far, and she regretted it the instant she said it.

Kyle gave her a look that could have blistered paint as he left the room. Maybe if he slammed the bedroom door, Sarah could have told herself he pissed her off, too. But he closed and locked the door quietly, making her feel like a cruel, heartless bitch.

"Oh, God, I fucked up," Sarah groaned miserably, taking a step backward and turning away.

Pops nodded at her. "Affirmative."

"Do you think he'll forgive me?" she asked in a small voice.

"He loves you."

"That's not a yes."

"That's also not a no."

Sarah could pop the lock with a nail. She could walk in, beg forgiveness for being a bitch, could try to make it up to him somehow. Or she could leave him alone, letting him lick his wounds in private overnight. That was a coward's way out, and likely would hurt him even more, though. He might think she didn't care for him at all.

Well, shit. She didn't like either option. But she'd never run from anything before, even her own fate as she railed against it.

She grabbed a long nail from Pops' toolbox and popped the lock to the bedroom door. Kyle was inside, perched on the end of the bed, head in hands, leaning over, looking miserable. He didn't even look up as she came in and knelt on the floor in front of him.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm a bitch. I'm not nice. I'm not a good person, not really. Not how you think I am. John probably got his douchebaggery from me, not you. You're the good one between the two of us."

Kyle looked up and dropped his hands into his lap. "What are we doing, Sarah? Do we need to fight so much that we'll turn on each other when there's no one left?"

"I don't know," Sarah whispered. "But John wasn't good for you. Maybe he cared, I don't know. But it was still an awful thing to do. He was still a shitty friend."

"He was all I knew, Sarah."

"And I knew people who'd knife each other or shoot up their stuff if they said the wrong thing. Yeah, they'd protect each other from other gangs, but they were also pretty damn selfish. So I guess we're in the same boat. I don't know how to be normal. That girl died the moment that the machines killed my parents."

"I don't know what normal is," Kyle replied tonelessly. "The guys I work with don't seem to care."

Sarah got off her knees and wrapped her arms around him. After a moment, Kyle embraced her tightly. "If you don't care, then I won't either."

She was his home. He belonged with her, even when mad at her, and she was going to have to learn to consider his feelings outside the bedroom, too. They weren't just roommates that fucked sometimes, after all. Whatever they were, it mattered. It was important.

"I do love you," Kyle whispered into her neck. "You. Not the stories I heard, but you. You're amazing, Sarah. You're not the bitch you think you are."

Yes, she was. She didn't deserve him.

Maybe it was time she tried to be the Sarah he thought she was. Maybe then she _would_ deserve him.

***  
***


	5. Laying A New Foundation

Sarah and Kyle seemed to settle into an uneasy truce. She still slept in the same room as Kyle, but his gaze was shuttered and he fiddled with the radio, skipping through stations and trying to listen to various kinds of music. "Why don't we go to a club?" she offered. "Or the coffee shop downtown has an open mic night, and someone's bound to play something good."

Kyle had given her a wilted smile. "I'm looking for something loud."

Loud meant he needed it to drown out the noises in his head as the memories replayed in a loop, dragging him out of the depths of his dreams. Loud meant he didn't feel comfortable talking with her about what he remembered.

She gave him a brittle smile in return. "I always liked the Ramones."

"Are they on the radio?"

"Not anymore. I think they died. Thirty years is a long time."

She'd lost a lot, too, and the reminder made Kyle turn away from her to look at the radio. "They sell music, don't they?" he asked.

"Yeah. No record stores anymore. Weird disc things or on the computer to put directly into your music player. It's not the same as putting on vinyl or taping a song off the radio."

The terms confused him, but Kyle only shrugged it off. "The guys were telling me about a few bands, put some stuff on the player for me."

"Can I listen?"

"Yeah," he murmured, nodding toward the mp3 player on the nightstand. It was charging, but she could always sit on his side of the bed and put the ear buds in. "Not working too well right now, so I'm looking for something louder."

The music queued up crashed into her ears, a steady throbbing baseline and wailing guitars with angry lyrics about loss and demons. She would have thought it should drown out the sound of gunfire and screams, but apparently not.

"I like it," she said quickly when she caught him looking at her. Maybe she didn't quite pull it off convincingly, but this kind of rock music wasn't the same as the New Wave stuff she had been used to in 1984. "Can't really dance to it, though."

"I'm not using it to dance. Not really my thing," he replied gruffly, turning away.

They connected so well in bed, and this talking thing was just shit. She was no good at it; Sarah didn't know what had possessed her to try doing it. Feeling odd and awkward, she stripped out of her clothes and then knelt down in front of him.

"What are you doing?" Kyle asked, a panicky note in his voice.

Not what she had planned at all. She let out a slow breath. "I suck at words. I can't do it. I can do this, though. I can give you control."

"This isn't right," Kyle muttered in a strangled voice. He made a vague choking noise when she put her arms behind her, crossing her wrists as if they were bound. Sarah kept her head bowed, and leaned forward a little, until her forehead touched his knee. "Sarah—"

"I'm yours to do with what you want."

He swallowed, a tense sound in the silence. She didn't move when his hand came to rest on the top of her head, fingers tentatively threading through her hair. Kyle made an uncertain kind of sound, a question without words, but she continued to wait until he was ready. Minutes ticked by, and still she waited with her head bowed.

Finally, she heard the rasp of his fly being unzipped, and he shifted around until she could take his soft cock in her mouth. She worked him to full hardness, ignoring the ache in her jaws, keeping her eyes closed. There was nothing more than the floor beneath her knees, her arms locked in place behind her, his cock in her mouth and the sound of his harsh breathing in her ears. Kyle fucked her mouth, and Sarah hoped he understood what she was trying to say without words sticking in her throat.

Kyle was quiet after he spurted into her mouth and she swallowed it down. "Kyle?" she asked, still not looking up.

"I'm good. You got stuff to do today."

Sarah stood and looked at him, but he couldn't quite meet her eyes. She reached out to ruffle his hair, but he flinched at her touch. Sarah withdrew her hand and got dressed, wondering if she had made a terrible mistake. "Um. Yeah. I'll head to the bookstore, then. I have the book list for my classes. Some lit, a math class, one sociology course. The advisor said it was a regular course load, and I should handle it okay."

Kyle swallowed visibly, mouth twisting in that disconcerted way he had. "You're smart. You can handle anything they throw at you."

"Wanna come with me?" she asked impulsively. "They probably sell music there," she added when he didn't reply right away.

"Okay," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Let's see what it looks like."

Sarah didn't mind him tagging along with her during the bus route, though his shoulders slumped a bit at how crowded it was at that time of day. The campus of City College of San Francisco was a sprawling one, and Kyle seemed intimidated by the Ocean Campus where most of Sarah's classes were going to be. "There's even a hotel management course. If you're interested in that kind of thing," she told him. He didn't look very interested.

She was glad to have Kyle around with her in the bookstore. She hadn't paid attention to the suggested book list provided by the guidance counselor, and the lit courses she had signed up for each had several books to read. That was also the case for her sociology course. Math required one very expensive textbook with no used options for purchase. Frowning at the stack of books in Kyle's arms, she shook her head. "I could borrow some of these from the library instead of buying them."

"You can buy the books. Pops said so."

"Yeah, but it's not useful. And if we have to run, we'd leave it all behind."

"What do you think you'd be running from?"

Her mouth slammed shut at that. Her old way of thinking didn't apply anymore. There was no more threat, no more need to run and hide, no need to conceal her whereabouts in case someone else sent back a terminator before 1984.

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry."

They bought all of the books on the list and then wandered around the campus to get an idea of where her classes were. Sarah couldn't help but snicker at how oblivious Kyle seemed to be of the appreciative stares coeds gave him. Once the hilarity wore off, she was a little irritated by it, too. Though maybe some of them were staring at her? It was hard to tell the difference, since college was supposed to be all about experimentation. Maybe the girls were looking at her and not at Kyle. She wasn't very interested in that option, but she supposed she could give it a try just to see what the fuss was all about.

But at the same time, the thought of one of those girls running their hands over his scars or kissing his bared skin set her blood to boiling. He was _hers,_ body and soul, and he had come back to save her life, not theirs.

"Not too many defensible positions on campus," Kyle muttered under his breath as they approached the building where her two literature courses would be.

"Probably not their worry when they were designing the place," Sarah commented dryly.

"Maybe not," he agreed in a low tone. "But I still don't like it. They have terrorists in this time, and there have been campus shootings. Domestic terrorists. They thought we were that kind. If anyone catches sight of you and puts two and two together..."

"It's been months," Sarah replied, realizing he was right. "And Pops would have said something if there was risk to us staying here."

"He might not be looking." At her incredulous expression, he sighed. "Okay, he would." He looked around, and didn't seem to take in any of the people or the ones giving him appreciative stares. "It's too open. That's not safe."

Paranoid bastard. It had saved his life in the future –his past, whatever—but Sarah found it grating. Of course she kept track of lines of sight. She was a sharpshooter, after all, and that was almost second nature.

"What? Are you going to go to classes with me?" she challenged.

Kyle frowned. "Probably not. It would be weird to have to cut out of work. And that... I need that. I need to be doing something."

"So do I. This is going to be my doing something."

Something softened in his expression, if only fractionally. "Okay. I don't like it, but okay."

She bit back a sharp reply and nodded. "I don't like how open your construction sites are, either," she said instead. His eyes widened fractionally, and she shrugged. "So yeah, I've checked out a few of your work places. Wide open. You can't say anything about where I'll be a couple hours a day. The library's huge, probably full of hiding places if need be."

"Oh." His mouth twisted. "I guess you did think it through."

For some things, anyway. That much was clear when Sarah arrived to her first Great Books class with not much more than a few notebooks and pens in her backpack. She got odd looks from the other students as she entered the room; she had carefully dressed in jeans, clunky boots, and her leather jacket over a black Ramones T shirt, thinking that showing up in a Morrissey or Smiths shirt would be a bit too depressing. She had about a dozen black jelly bracelets on her right wrist, and a black leather cuff on her left with a few pointed studs. That and the switchblades in her boots were her weapons; she knew taking a Beretta in to class was impossible, but she didn't want to be unarmed, either. The regulars at the bar had thought her outfits were cute.

These kids all thought she was weird.

They wore jeans, too, but lighter in color, with sneakers and T shirts or plain sweatshirts. She looked fairly aggressive in comparison to these softies, and she felt completely out of place. Rapidly scanning the room, she saw an empty seat next to a dishwater blonde, and the girl wasn't looking at her in horror.

"Hey," Sarah said as she slid into seat. "I'm Sarah."

"Natalie," the blonde replied. She had red lips, winged eyeliner and perfectly tweezed brows. Her shirt was a form fitting shell pink, and there were rhinestones at the collar. "Interesting outfit," she said as Sarah shrugged out of the jacket. "Trying to scare off the dick waffles of the world?"

Sarah smiled at her. "Think it's working?"

"Definitely," Natalie laughed. "I just look prep, but I had a punk/goth thing going on in my junior year of high school. And part of senior year," she added after a moment's consideration. "Which is why I'm at a community college instead of a UC school."

Smiling as if she knew what Natalie meant, Sarah nodded. "I moved around a lot, never really did much in school. I thought I could try to figure out what I want to do."

"Yeah. Try to figure out what you want to do that'll repay loans and cover rent in this city," Natalie said wryly.

"Exactly," Sarah replied.

The teacher called for attention to begin going over the syllabus, essay formats and when the midterm and finals were going to be. Sarah dutifully annotated her syllabus and took notes on the formatting in her notebook. After all, if she was going to be a student, she was going to do it all the right way.

Natalie was impressed with her dutiful note taking, and agreed to swap contact information. She was probably the first normal friend Sarah made.

It occurred to Sarah later that it was entirely surreal to be in an ordinary classroom with ordinary people talking about ordinary things. Not a whisper about fate. Not a drop of talking of the future or AI's gone rogue. Not a single word about weapons or safety checks or which model pistol would be better for her little hands.

Surreal was scary. And almost nice.

Kyle seemed a little withdrawn when she returned from class to start her reading. He was disconcerted by how she focused on the book, even though he was sitting next to her on the couch. He didn't even turn on the TV or radio to distract himself. Pops was polishing parts of an engine; Sarah had long since stopped asking where he got them or why he did it incessantly. For all she knew, it was extra money on a side job.

"You could read a book yourself," Sarah suggested.

He just sighed, for a moment looking guilty. She couldn't even begin to guess what he was thinking, and missed the days when she thought she could. Just when the silence started to get even more awkward, he said "Nah. Not my thing."

It wasn't an insult, and Sarah knew that. "I know. But we fought for this, to have a chance at a normal life. Why not even try to take it?"

"I don't know what that would be," Kyle said morosely. "Everything stopped being normal a long time ago. I buried my parents in the wreck of our yard and... And... Then I ran and I was caught, I ran again, and I started fighting. That's all I know."

"Before that? What did you do?"

"I don't remember. Video games, maybe. The other me likes them."

"So we can get you a game."

"It would require a game system and controllers as well," Pops intoned, not even looking up from the engine. "I had not purchased one when establishing this safe house, but if you require it, I can select one for your enjoyment."

Kyle looked uncomfortable. "Um. I don't think it's a good idea. Can't get distracted..."

"You can relax a little and still defend us if something happens. Plus, Pops is here."

"Affirmative," Pops said, looking up. He grinned that grimace he used when trying to look cheerful. "I am programmed to protect Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese."

"I didn't ask you to."

"It is a related directive."

Sighing, Kyle slouched further into the couch. "Oh."

"We'll get video games," Sarah said in a decisive tone. "You can play while I read. Pops, get some calming games or something."

"First person shooters would not aid in relaxation."

"Yeah, definitely not," Kyle muttered.

Sarah looked at him in disappointment, but was silent.

"Games can have cooperative features," Pops continued. "So Sarah Connor can join you in this activity. Or you can go online and find comrades in your quest for entertainment," Pops continued in the same deadpan tone.

"Jesus, Pops," Sarah grumped. "You make it sound like you want to see a strip club."

"Males often do that in this time."

"They did it in 1984, too," Sarah returned. Her sour expression deepened. "Dicks."

Startled by her announcement, Kyle looked at her. "What's a strip club?"

Sarah resisted the urge to cover her face in her hands. Pops wound up matter of factly defining what a strip club was, as well as lap dances and the chances of illicit transactions taking place in back rooms. Kyle's eyes were a bit wide, poor thing, and Sarah tamped down on the possessive feeling deep in her belly that made her want to grab his face in her hands and kiss him senseless before ordering him to eat her out until her insides quivered and her knees felt like jelly.

"That's... awful," Kyle declared finally, lips twisting in distaste. "Sex is..." He visibly faltered as he searched for a way to describe his thought process. "It's important," he said finally, though Sarah got the sense it wasn't the right word to describe how he felt. "It's a risk that should only be taken with someone you trust. Someone you're sure of. It's cheap to just trade it for cash and not connect to someone you care about."

Blinking at him in surprise, Sarah gave up on reading her book. "So they don't have people just hooking up in the future?"

"Well, some do, yeah," Kyle admitted uncomfortably. "There's some in the corps that just look each other over in the barracks and find an empty supply closet. But that's... wrong, somehow. It works for them, but that's not for me. I don't even like the idea of that. You should know who you're with. You should feel something. That's just another way to connect with someone. Sex isn't interchangeable like socks."

Considering that she had done the _just because_ and _fuck fate_ sex, Sarah kept her mouth shut. Sex absolutely could be had with anonymous pretty boys in clubs or back alleys if she was in the mood. It was probably a difference in outlook, though if his comrades in the future had acted like she did, it was something about Kyle. That he was an old fashioned romantic, for all of the horrors he experienced and still wouldn't talk about.

Taking his hand in hers, she threaded her fingers through and brought his hand up to her mouth to kiss his knuckles. "You're a good man, Kyle Reese."

He smiled, painfully earnest and with such devotion, even though she had hurt him so badly not that long before. She really didn't deserve that kind of smile. "For you."

Because he loved her. Because her happiness was everything to him.

Sarah leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder, homework forgotten. He was too good, too pure, even with what he had seen and done in his past. She felt old and bitter and spent in comparison, too jaded before her life had even begun. Telling him to date and get to know other girls wouldn't be appreciated, and she didn't like the threads of jealousy curling in her gut, either. He was hers, she was his. That was simply the way it was.

Perhaps she was starting to accept that.

***

It wasn't really necessary to get together with Natalie, but the blonde had suggested that they could prepare better for the midterm by going over their notes for different novels. "Better than rereading them all, right? And I think you're taking the math class I had last semester, so I could always bring my old notes if you want them."

"You'd help out that way?" Sarah had asked, pleasantly surprised by the offer. "That would be great, thanks."

"I never did throw out my old stuff, and it's collecting dust. I'm not taking math ever again, I know that much. Maybe graphic design stuff, I'm keeping that, but honestly, the teacher was such a bore, I don't think I want to do that, either."

"Not any closer to knowing what you want to do, huh?" Sarah had asked sympathetically.

"Nope. How about you?"

"As long as I'm not a waitress somewhere, I'm good."

Natalie had laughed good-naturedly. "I sometimes think I'm going to be stuck as a salesgirl forever. Which is fucking depressing, but probably what I get for being a stoner for two years," she said with a shrug. "At least I never got into anything worse. My old friends practically destroyed their brains on meth or acid, and holy shit, is that sad."

Sarah nodded and managed not to grin. The topic was hardly laugh worthy, but the fact that Natalie had started to curse like a gangbanger the more comfortable she was with Sarah was actually funny. "I used to be friends with gang members when I lived near LA," Sarah admitted after a moment. "They're all dead now."

Eyes wide, Natalie shook her head. "Damn. That's harsh."

"Very."

"Where do you live? I'll bring my notes and some Starbucks tomorrow, you provide the snacks."

It wasn't until she had gotten home from class that Sarah winced and nearly smacked herself in the head. In her enthusiasm of having a friend and study buddy, Sarah had never explained Pops. Or Kyle. And how in the world _was_ she going to explain them?

Her clothes were a bit more understated now than at the start of the semester, but band T shirts, black and denim still dominated her wardrobe. Kyle went for simple and dark clothing, and didn't seem to put much effort into his looks. His hair was still longer than it had been when she first met him, but he didn't try to get it cut military style again. Maybe it still mattered to him that she liked this look on him, clean cut and neat, easy to slide her fingers through, easy to pull him in closer to her body.

"Um, guys?" Sarah announced, seeing Pops and Kyle seated at the table, engine parts being reassembled in front of them. "Gross, there's going to be grease all over the damn place. And what's for dinner, anyway?"

"Lasagna's baking," Kyle announced, not looking up. Pops did, and smiled his grimace at her.

She winced again, and fell into a chair beside them. "Hey. So. I kinda invited a friend over to study for the midterms."

Kyle looked up at that point. "Did you do any recon on her?"

Sarah wanted to feel affronted, but she hadn't, not in the way Pops or Kyle would have, not past a cursory tail and following her around campus to be sure she wasn't a runaway machine that had better infiltration skills. But no, Natalie was a coed that lived off campus with her mother. Sarah had unashamedly spied on the house when Natalie had her other lit class, and it was in a quiet neighborhood. Natalie had once mentioned that her mother was a social worker and her father had been some kind of administrator. Wasn't it ironic that they hadn't been able to prevent their daughter from falling into the wrong crowd in high school?

"Some," Sarah told him. "She's not a spy, not a machine, and has no harmful intent toward me."

"I am accessing her social media profiles," Pops announced.

"I didn't even tell you her name!"

"You have only mentioned the name Natalie, and there is a single instance of Natalie on your phone," Pops declared. "From that, I extrapolated the identity of the girl and will complete the proper vetting process to be your friend."

"Jesus, Pops," Sarah cried, eyes wide. "It's been seven weeks that I've known her. If she was out to kill me, she would've done it by now. She's not a killer."

After a long, awkward pause, Pops nodded. "Affirmative. She had ingested hallucinogenic substances in high school, dated two women and three men up to this time, and occasionally imbibed alcoholic beverages. Her latest status update included a picture of a stack of books from your shared literature course with the caption 'Look at my hot date tomorrow night!' and a smiley face," Pops reported.

Sarah covered her face in her hands. "How am I going to explain you two to her?"

"I am Pops," he intoned, putting the last piece back together in front of him. "Kyle Reese, have you completed your half of this project?"

That startled Kyle back into action. "Oh. Almost. Then after we put the pieces back together..."

"Mario will use these to replace the broken one in his current restoration project," Pops said. Oh, was that what Pops was helping with? Sarah hadn't known. Or cared enough to ask, if she was going to be honest about it.

"Right," Kyle murmured, polishing the next piece he was holding. "It's good that you've got plans, Sarah," he said without looking up. Realizing that he couldn't even look at her hurt, though she couldn't have said why.

"And how do I explain you?"

"Do you have to?" he asked, confused, looking up at her finally.

No awkwardness in his gaze. But at the same time, Sarah didn't think that he truly forgave her for all the things she had said. It was likely more that he filed everything away to be dealt with later, and simply never went to deal with anything. That was a tactic she'd used herself for years, and as far as she could tell was commonplace in the military.

"She's going to ask who you are."

"Kyle Reese," he said with a shrug, looking back down at what he was doing. "I live here. I work on stuff. Cook. Whatever."

"We share a room."

"Yeah. About that," he began.

"I'm not moving," Sarah said quickly, pushing away the spike of panic that shot through her.

"If she inquires, simply state that you are in a monogamous sexual relationship. I would suggest stressing monogamy. Even in this time, polyamorous relationships are not well understood or received by many."

Sarah sighed and headed for the bedroom. She thought of saying a dramatic "I hate you all!" but had already tried such theatrics as a preteen. None of it worked on Pops, and something like that would make Kyle frown like a kicked puppy.

The thought of his disappointment distracted her from reading one of the texts that the midterm was going to focus on. Turning on music didn't help. What was this crap they listened to in the clubs now, anyway? What happened to actual lyrics in songs? What was this "oh baby" repetitive crap? The noise distortions didn't bother her so much, not unless one of the 80's songs she knew was skewered, but most things on the radio felt insipid in comparison to what she used to sing along with or dance to.

And Kyle wasn't willing to dance with her right now. That hurt more than she thought it would, but she didn't know how to apologize.

He came in after about a half hour, grimy and sweaty, intending to take off some of the dirtier clothes before heading to the shower. Sarah sat up straighter and put the book aside from where she had been lounging on the bed, waiting for him. "Hi," she said, feeling like an idiot.

"Pops went out," Kyle announced abruptly. "Had to deliver the engine."

"Big project you're working on?" she asked, trying to keep it sounding casual.

"Side project," he clarified. "Pops knows a few guys at the detailing shop, tosses him some work no one else wants to do and does 'em for cheap. Do enough of 'em, and it adds up."

"You like it," Sarah observed, standing up. "You like figuring things out, fixing them, changing them in ways they don't expect."

"I guess," he said with a shrug before taking off his shirt. "Broken things are still broken things."

Sarah let her fingers trail down his chest gently. "They can be fixed. Made beautiful and whole. Not like it never happened, but the area around a broken bone is stronger than the original. It fuses together tighter."

"If it's left to heal."

She stood on her tip toes and could only reach high enough to kiss his chin comfortably, since he wasn't playing along. "Or you let people help you heal."

Kyle grasped her shoulders. "What are you playing at?"

"I'm not," Sarah replied, pulling loose. "At least, I'm not _playing_ at anything. The sex works, and I sleep better when you're here with me." She paused, not sure how to formulate her tangled emotions into words that made sense. God, there was a reason why she had avoided even a whiff of relationship bullshit in the past. "I told you I don't know what's normal. I'm _trying._ I'm trying to be nice, to be helpful. I'm trying to be the Sarah you want me to be, and I don't know how to do that. I'm not very nice."

He swallowed, a pained cast to the way he crinkled his eyes. "You say that a lot. I don't know if you hear yourself talking sometimes. You put yourself down, like you're not important."

"Your history only remembers me as somebody's mother. I think that's a pretty big clue that I'm a nobody otherwise. And all I was was a waitress. I didn't do anything important."

"Where I come from," Kyle replied slowly, "survival is important. And you _survived."_

"Yeah? Well, in _this_ timeline, someone only counts as somebody if they do something, if they leave a mark and are remembered. And I'm not."

"It hurts me when you put yourself down."

"And it hurts _me_ when you don't see yourself as worthwhile, either. You deserve better than you've gotten."

"So have you."

Sarah gave him a wan smile, conceding the point. "Yeah. I guess in the meantime, we just figure out how to keep on muddling through."

She didn't really expect a response to it, but it still hurt that she hadn't gotten one.

***

Natalie showed up at the apartment in jeans, a red shirt and dangly earrings with red stones in them. Her hair was pulled up in a twist, artfully messy and clipped back, and she had kohl around her eyes and bright red lipstick on her mouth. Somehow, it worked; Sarah was jealous of the ease she could pull it off, when Sarah felt like a kid playing dress up whenever she tried going through the makeup aisles at stores or more feminine clothes. She grinned widely at Natalie anyway, letting her in and leading her to the dining room table. She left the kitchen alone, in case Pops came back with yet another engine to clean and put back together, which was kind of the routine.

They had their annotated copies of the books that would be used on the midterm, notes from class and the list of prior year questions that the professor had used. Natalie had just laughed at Sarah's surprise. "C'mon, we're not the only losers taking this class, and I have friends that took this last year. There's a whole TQ underground, if you know people."

"TQ?" Sarah asked, frowning.

"Test question. If you want in, let me know. Just memorize which questions you get, write 'em down afterward, and then e-mail 'em over. Then they get collated and added to the collective."

"Seems like a lot of trouble."

"Not if you're stuck in a class. And they do more than just lit. Seriously, the science kids are all over this system."

Sarah frowned. "Oh, and that would've helped you with math last semester."

"Exactly," Natalie said, nodding to the folder of notes she had plopped onto the table for Sarah. "I found it useful, because math is just not my thing. If you wanna join, okay. If not, don't worry about it, you can still use my stuff. It's not like you have to decide right away." Natalie took a sip of her coffee and looked at the door when a key rattled in the lock. "Family?"

"Yeah," Sarah replied, not sure who was back and how to explain it.

Pops came in, and sure enough had the oily canvas bag of engine parts to clean. "I did not acquire dinner," he announced as he shut the door.

"Hey, Pops. This is Natalie."

He gave the girl a long stare, likely committing her face and biometric data to memory. "Of course," he said finally. "You can get pizza if you stay."

Sarah was grateful that Natalie at least stayed quiet until Pops went to the kitchen. "Um. Yeah," she began uncomfortably. "He's a little protective."

Natalie looked around. "No Mom. I guess I could see why."

She hadn't thought of that excuse before, and gratefully grabbed the out. "Yeah. Only child."

They went back to going over the notes and discussing the characters in the novels they had read so far, which was far more fun than Sarah had thought it would be. Maybe she could be a lit teacher? How hard could it be, if her boring ass professor got a job?

Kyle came home, and apparently it had started raining in the interim. He had dressed in only a T shirt and jeans, and both were plastered to his body. Natalie actually stopped talking midsentence and gaped at him. "Please tell me he's your brother."

"Only child, remember?" Sarah reminded her friend, smirking a little. "He's my—" What could she say? Lover? Friend? Planned baby daddy that she was trying not to make the baby with? That just sounded odd and awful, and really didn't explain the relationship they did have, as tangled as it was. "He's Kyle."

"Yum," Natalie murmured under her breath, smiling at Kyle as he made a beeline for the bedroom for a change of clothes. "I'm guessing you got dibs on that piece of eye candy."

"Yeah," Sarah said, feeling awkward. She didn't like the thought of Natalie ogling him, even if he had looked good enough to eat. "Look, I—"

"Threesome?" Natalie offered, smiling brightly at Sarah. "I mean, he's _gorgeous,_ and you're cute, so it would hardly be a hardship on my part."

Sarah blinked in surprise. "Uh. Um."

"I'll take that a polite no," Natalie said when Sarah couldn't think of anything to say. "Damn, girl. No wonder you don't gossip about the hot guys in our class. You've got hotter at home."

"You think I'm cute?" Sarah blurted, her brain still not wrapping around the comment.

"Well, sure. In that gangsta kinda way, you know? If you went toward prep a bit more, I'm sure those jerkwads in our class would be panting after you. Then again, now I know why you're not interested. Your Kyle is delicious."

"Um, yeah. I think so." This was surreal for Sarah; she'd never talked about guys with girls before. Was this kind of talk common? "I just. Uh..."

"You're not all weird about me being bi, are you?" Natalie asked, concern in her expression. She missed Kyle heading to the bathroom with clothes in his hand, and leaned over to look at Sarah. "I mean, I'm not seriously hitting on you, if that's what you're worried about."

"No," Sarah admitted. "I just... I don't think of myself as cute."

"Oh!" Natalie laughed a little in relief and leaned back in her seat. "Well, after the midterm, why don't we go shopping, then? Update the look a little so you don't look like you're part of a punk band? Not that it's a bad look on you, but if you're not feeling it, we can try something different. I mean, you don't need to scare off any other dick waffles, do you?"

The effusive friendliness suddenly made Sarah want to cry. "I never had friends that were girls before," she mumbled.

Natalie blinked. "Oh. The gangbanger comment." She pursed her lips, thinking. "We're going to hit the mall and do the girly shit I used to do with my non-stoner friends in high school, then. I could invite you over for a sleepover, do each other's hair and nails and makeup and stuff. Give you a crash course in that stuff, minus the drama."

"What about those girls? Are you still friends with them?"

"Nah, I lost most of 'em when I hit the drug scene. And I walked away from _those_ people, so I'm kinda low on the friend quota right now." Natalie shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal, but Sarah could tell it bothered her. Maybe that was why she was trying so hard to put Sarah at ease with her. Sarah could understand that kind of desperate need for friends.

"There's the TQ crowd," Sarah pointed out.

"Oh, yeah. Some of them are competitive as hell, and that's not me. But they're decent enough to talk to. I almost dated Gabriel, though," she mused. "He's pretty nice, didn't think I was a ditz, but is way too serious. Business major, taking some of the basic courses here to get his GPA up before he tries transferring to Berkeley."

"Maybe we could double date," Sarah suggested, then internally cringed. What did she know about dating anyway, let alone double dating?

Natalie laughed and shook her head. "Almost dating," she stressed. "Dude didn't want anything to disrupt his studying time. And I am definitely a disruption."

"Fun one, though," Sarah offered.

She grinned. "Thanks."

They chatted about various things as well as the novels for the lit class. Natalie was so absorbed in her assessment of Tess of the D'Urbervilles that she even missed Kyle ducking back into the bedroom with wet hair and a towel around his waist. Sarah was enjoying Natalie's discussion, but hadn't missed it. Natalie was right, he was yummy. And there was both longing in his expression as he caught her laughing with Natalie, as well as a sense of joy there. He was glad she had a friend, then, though it probably bothered him that their own relationship was so strained.

He wasn't the only one. But she didn't know how to fix it, not when she was better at destruction than in building things.

***  
***


	6. Putting On War Paint

It was a weekend two weeks after the midterm that Sarah and Natalie managed to get to the mall, and Sarah agreed to stay overnight afterward. Pops had by then vetted not only Natalie, but her mother and older sister Nadine. Natalie's father had died while she was in high school, and her mother had retreated into the house. Nadine had been away at college, and Sarah could suddenly understand why drugs became such a big focus for Natalie. It instantly gave her a release and friends that would claim to be with her forever; Sarah had seen it on the streets of LA far too often while growing up. A grieving Natalie wouldn't have stood a chance.

Sarah thought of her own grief, of how it had been sublimated into learning how to take care of herself and shoot weapons, how to take down Terminators and stay alive. She hadn't needed drugs to take the edge off, not when destroying things vented her rage well enough.

She was in jeans and a plain black T shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. There was little on her face other than mascara and light pink lip gloss, and she knew she looked incredibly young and innocent. Kyle had seemed somewhat upset that he was being left out of whatever she was going to do, but wasn't comfortable enough to actually talk to her about it. She also felt too awkward to ask him, and lamely had suggested he call one of his work friends to hang out. "We need to make a bunch of friends, right?" she had said. "I'm trying."

"Yeah," he had replied tonelessly. "Friends."

Belatedly, she recalled that John Connor had been his friend, savior and mentor. And he had helped her kill him.

Snapping her mouth shut, she took the coward's way out and met Natalie at the mall.

"You seem to be so not thrilled to be here," Natalie commented when they met up for lunch.

Wincing, Sarah dropped her eyes to look at the burger that was suddenly unappetizing. "I'm kind of an ass sometimes."

"To your Kyle?"

She looked up sharply and caught Natalie's sympathetic look. "What?"

"Hey. You guys give me the impression you've been together a long time."

"Well..."

"So you're probably not even trying to do anything fun together, are you?"

Sarah looked at Natalie blankly. "Like?"

Natalie actually covered her face with her hands and made a despairing noise. "Oh my God, Sarah, how did you survive until you met me?"

"With a knife and hidden guns," Sarah replied without thinking.

Blinking in surprise, Natalie peered at her through her fingers. "Holy shit, Sarah, you're not even joking," she blurted.

"Of course not," Sarah said, affronted. "What do you take me for?"

"The gang bangers you talked about," Natalie murmured, nodding after a moment. "Okay. So, frame of reference is totally different."

"I think it's safe to assume," Sarah replied dryly.

Natalie rolled her eyes, ignoring the comment. "You and Kyle need to date. Do something romantic." She pulled her hands away from her face and grinned, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Makeup and hair and tight fitting clothes to show off your assets."

"I don't go for girls," Sarah said.

"Just because I do doesn't mean I'm hitting on you," Natalie huffed, leaning back in her chair. "Or do you think I am?"

Sarah frowned. "I don't know? I mean, the comment about the threesome?"

"I was joking. Mostly. C'mon, can you blame me? Your Kyle is hot as all get-out, of course I'm going to say something. Doesn't mean I'm going to actually do anything. I'm not some kind of skank stealing my friend's guys. That's just awful."

Relieved, Sarah slumped a little. "Oh. Good." She gave Natalie a wan smile. "I'm not so good at the friend thing. Not with girls anyway. Gangbanger girls thought I was in competition with them or that I wanted to steal their guys. Which I wasn't."

"Well, yeah. Too much competing with each other." Natalie rolled her eyes and then munched on her fries. "Which is just bullshit and stupid, so. Good thing we're not like that."

"Full of bullshit and stupidity?" Sarah asked, pulling a face. "I dunno, I have my moments."

Natalie laughed and then picked up her burger. "So does everybody, Sarah. So. You and Kyle are together for so long that you don't even think about impressing him anymore." She snickered at Sarah's expression. "Oh, come on. You want to scare away asshats, don't even look when he's got his clothes plastered to him, but you get jealous as all hell when you think I'm trying to mack on your territory. You have it _bad."_ She chewed thoughtfully, oblivious to how still Sarah had suddenly gotten. "Might be nice to have that, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't still look your best. If not for him, then for you. Please tell me that's not your nicest outfit."

"It's just clothes," Sarah said defensively.

"Your dad give you a line of credit?" Natalie asked.

"Well, yeah, for emergencies."

"You know what the max is?" she asked, looking eager.

"Um. No. Never needed to find out." Sarah gave Natalie an assessing glance when she lit up and grinned. "What?"

"We're going to find out. I want a few new shirts anyway, but we're going to glam you up a bit, really make your eyes pop, make Kyle drool all over you and forget whatever dumbass thing you said to him this morning."

Sarah winced. "More like a lot of mornings. And evenings."

And if her friend could see that she cared about him and called it love, then maybe she did have something stronger than lust and concern for his welfare, no matter how much she wanted to push it away.

"I missed having a girl friend I could talk makeup and clothes with like this!" Natalie crowed, bopping in her seat joyfully. "We're hitting up all the stores and getting you some cool stuff."

"I have perfectly workable stuff!"

"Yeah. _Workable._ We need to jazz you up a bit. Not going slutty or anything, if you're worried about that, but kinda giving you a little softer of a look to go with the edges. I think Rampage and Forever 21 will work." She sighed dramatically at Sarah's blank look. "Oh, Sarah, your education has been woefully incomplete. Westfield is way too upscale for what we want, but we can probably find stuff at H &M. Avoid Abercrombie or Banana or J. Crew. Way too prep for your style, I think."

"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."

"We want to go to Stoneridge," Natalie declared. "C'mon, finish up. We can at least hit up H&M while we're here, but after this, we're heading to the other mall. Trust me, I know these two malls inside and out. I spent most of high school trolling these halls and smoking weed in the parking lots." She laughed at Sarah's dubious expression. "Would I steer you wrong?"

"I don't know. Maybe?"

"Not about clothes or makeup." She pointed to herself, and Sarah had to admit, she looked effortlessly graceful and pretty. "I had to start obsessing over something other than drugs and being a dumbass, right? And high end makeup and clothes are it."

Sarah sighed. "Okay. If you say so."

"I definitely do," Natalie said brightly. "I'm in my natural element here. You might rule the streets and the book work, but if it's down to a mall crawl, I can lead you wherever you want to go and set you up."

In the future Kyle talked about, none of those skills would have mattered. But that future wasn't going to exist anymore, they had made sure of it.

Might as well see what this alternate future was all about.

***

It had been awkward to try on clothes in the store, to see the shape of her figure in tighter fits and curve skimming fabrics. Natalie convinced her to try skirts on for the first time since her parents had died, not that the other girl had known about that. "It's... impractical," she said lamely, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Pops would hate it.

Natalie had rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around Sarah's shoulders, propping her chin on the bony part to look at her in the mirror. "Sarah, it's _a miniskirt._ If you're looking to get Kyle hot and bothered, it's _very_ practical. Hike that up and peel off your underwear. Or shove 'em to the side if you really want to get to it fast." She had let go and skipped backwards while laughing when Sarah gaped at her in horror and nearly shoved her off. "Oh, c'mon, everyone needs one inappropriate friend, and that's me."

"You're enjoying this!" Sarah accused.

"Hell, yeah. I feel like I'm corrupting a Catholic schoolgirl or something. It's wicked fun."

Sarah had to tamp down on her irritation and keep from quirking her lips into a smile. Okay, this possibly wasn't _that_ bad, and this was so... _normal._ Holy fucking hell, it was amazing to not worry about a Terminator coming out and sniping her, it was surreal.

"Whatever," she said, waving her hand dismissively and heading for the dressing room. "Well, I feel stupid."

"C'mon, it's a classic black mini, it goes with everything. Most of what you own is black, it would be easy to match." Natalie grabbed a red and black striped shirt off a rack next to her and handed it over. "Here. Put that on top."

This had to be what Barbie dolls and babies felt like, being dressed up and paraded for someone else's amusement. But somewhere along the way, Sarah stopped feeling so irritated by it. Maybe it was when Natalie tossed something horribly floral at her, which neither of them would wear even on a dare. Maybe it was the way Natalie subtly pointed out the colors that worked best with her complexion and the fabrics to look out for. Sarah didn't understand the references to a Clinton and Stacey, but appreciated that Natalie knew about colors and cut and fit, and was willing to give her hints to look for. It was enough of a distraction that Sarah didn't realize she had spent a few hundred dollars in clothes, shoes, and makeup, even with the sales and opening up a new store account, all in the space of several hours. Once she realized it, she was horrified at the extravagance, but Natalie only laughed delightedly and was pleased to be able to play with it all right away for their sleepover.

"We can mix and match your new stuff and some of mine. I promise, I'm not carrying any weirdo germs or anything," Natalie said, gesturing for Sarah to come with her into the bathroom. It was a fairly large one compared to the one in the apartment Sarah shared with Pops and Kyle, and she apparently had an entire drawer of makeup next to the sink. "The top one's my Mom's, which she hardly ever touches anymore. I swear, she has a mascara in there that's like ten years old or something. Better not touch any of that stuff."

Sarah pretended she understood the reference, and simply nodded. "Hey, we'll try whatever you want and see what fits me."

Natalie all but squealed in delight, and Sarah could see the girl that had so desperately tried to fit in. Sarah had learned to tamp down on those instincts, but Natalie never had to. She grabbed eye shadow palettes, blushes, brushes and different color eyeliner as well as makeup remover. At Sarah's odd look, Natalie grinned. "Trust me, it makes taking it all off so much easier. I tried different wipes and stuff, even baby wipes, and it's irritating on eyelids. I may have a serious thing for eye shadow, just so you know."

Not really understanding it, she followed Natalie to her bedroom and sat still as Natalie went wild trying different shadow and liner combinations, snapping pictures on Sarah's phone so that she could look at them later. At the moment, Sarah felt too overwhelmed to really pay attention to the combinations of colors. People paid money for this? It was such an extravagance. Why bother? A single high end palette could be a week's worth of food.

But she wasn't on the run anymore. Terminators were gone. She could figure out who Sarah Connor really was, now that she wasn't going to be Mother of the Resistance anymore.

"This doesn't feel like me," Sarah finally sighed, wiping off yet another combination. "And it's too much effort."

"Eyeliner and mascara and lip gloss?" Natalie offered. "You don't have to go all out with four or five colors at once, either. If you notice, I usually don't. We're just playing around."

"This is silly. I don't know how to do any of this stuff."

"How else are you gonna learn? It's not like I woke up one day and knew how to do it. My mother didn't teach me, after all."

Sarah frowned, suddenly self conscious. "Where is she, anyway?"

"Probably still holed up in her room," Natalie replied, voice flat. "She hardly ever comes out."

Not wanting to touch that can of emotional worms, Sarah picked up the palette of eye shadows that Natalie had been using. "So how'd you learn this stuff?"

"YouTube," Natalie replied promptly, probably grateful for the diversion. "And just messing around to see what worked. I usually like the plain colors or the _dramatic_ look," she said, waggling her eyebrows playfully on "dramatic."

She looked at the palette. "I think most of these are too dark."

"For you, yeah. But with the right shadow brush, you could work the colors as eyeliner."

"That seems like too much hassle."

"You can spend ten minutes on yourself in the morning, right?"

"I guess so."

Natalie pointed at her face. "That's all I need. Promise."

Disbelieving it, Sarah let Natalie brush two colors of shadow on her lids, put on mascara and liner, then the lip gloss. "Lucky you, you don't need foundation too much. If you did, it still probably wouldn't take you long." She sat back and looked at her handiwork. "I like it. This would be an everyday, simple kind of thing."

Sarah nearly did a double take. "Oh." She leaned in closer to the mirror Natalie held out to her. "I like it," she said shyly. "I look pretty."

"Yeah, exactly. Why shouldn't you rock those eyes? Seriously, a good feature on you." Natalie grinned at her. "Now let's jazz up your jeans a bit. Kyle's eyes will pop out of his head when he sees you next."

She frowned at Natalie. "But I still said some really bitchy things..."

"Well, have you tried apologizing?"

Sarah shot her a look that clearly said "What are you, stupid? Of course not!" as clearly as if she had said the words. "He wouldn't believe it, anyway, because I meant it."

Natalie sighed. "Okay, then. We're going to try something." She got up and started digging in the back of her closet until she found a workbook. "We're going to do some of these exercises, and I'm gonna snap pics of it so you can do them on your own."

"The hell?"

Wiggling the workbook in her hands, Natalie shrugged. "I got this when I tried therapy. Didn't stick with it long, the whole drugs thing, but I kept the book and did it when I found it after I got sober. Amazingly enough, my therapist hadn't been full of shit." She laughed at Sarah's doubtful expression. "It's about _feelings,"_ she said, waggling her fingers at her. "You know, those icky, awful things we don't want to feel, so we throw them around so that someone else can feel that shit for us."

"I have no idea what you just said," Sarah lied.

"Yeah, well, I'm your therapist as well as beauty coach," Natalie teased, plopping down in front of Sarah. "So I need to throw around some of the lingo, right?"

Sarah sighed. "Why are you trying so hard?"

"Oh, come on. You guys have to have been together since like, junior high. Don't throw that away if you can fix it."

The comment made Sarah wonder how long Natalie's parents had been together before her father died. That had to have been a long time for it to have devastated the family so badly, for her mother to still live like a ghost in her own home.

"What if he's still angry with me?" Sarah asked in a small voice.

"That's where the makeover comes into play. Distract him so he's thinking with the wrong head, and then you can apologize." She laughed at Sarah's incredulous look. "Hey, just because _my_ love life is nonexistent right now doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. It means I want to live vicariously through you right now."

That made sense, too. She sighed. "Okay. Tell me what's in this magic workbook of yours."

Beaming, Natalie proceeded to do just that.

***

Sarah wasn't sure what she expected getting back to the apartment, but being ignored certainly wasn't it. Frowning, she shrugged out of her leather jacket and hung it up on the peg near the door that she usually used. She was wearing one of the new blouses that Natalie had convinced her to wear, a bright blue frilly thing, as well as tighter jeans "to show your ass off" and heeled boots that had her wobbling a bit. Her other clothes were in her duffle bag, and she had all the store bags with her as well. That should've been a tip off that something was different, but Pops was in the kitchen as always, and Kyle was in the living room staring at the TV with fierce concentration on his face. It was some kind of survival show, two men going through some kind of wilderness that Sarah had never seen, arguing how best to get back to civilization. She didn't see the appeal of it, but maybe he was drawn to the greenery and seeing nature. It was highly unlikely that either of them would ever be trapped anywhere that they would need to learn how to find water in a jungle or that seep wells could at least give a little moisture until they found flowing water less likely to contain pathogens.

Kyle noticed when she banged the bedroom door open and knocked into it with some of the shopping bags. "What is all that stuff?"

"I went out, remember?" Sarah asked, trying to keep the testiness from her voice. She was supposed to matter to him, right? Didn't that mean that he should notice her more? Never mind that being noticed bothered her, that she had to be invisible and not hunted; Kyle was different, because he was supposed to find her. Instead, she had to find him. She had to be the one to teach him things in this world she was only learning herself. It was hard not to resent that, to resent the fate she tried so hard to escape.

Yet here it was, staring her in the face.

He frowned at her. "You're different."

"Eloquent," she replied tightly. Her lips stretched in a grimace of a smile. "Is it bad?"

"It's..." Kyle's hands fluttered helplessly. "Different."

"You said that."

"It's impractical," Pops called out from the kitchen.

Sarah glared at him. "What?"

"You cannot run in those heels. Your gait is unsteady, the center of gravity shifts too much, and it would be too easy to overturn your balance if attacked."

"Okay, that," Kyle jumped in, trying to look helpful.

Upset and not knowing why, she spun on that tottering heel and dropped the shopping bags so that she could slam the bedroom door shut in Kyle's face.

God, she wanted to cry. She wanted to wail. For once, couldn't she do something nice and get some kind of recognition for it?

And to her horror, the tears came. Wiping them away angrily left smears of black mascara, glittery teal eye shadow and black liner on the back of her hands. "Well, fuck," she grumbled, frustrated as she looked at her hands. What did her face look like if that mess was sticking to her hands? The gloss on her lips was starting to feel cloying and sticky, and she bit it off her lips with a vengeance as Kyle knocked on the door.

"Sarah?"

"The hell do you want?" she said, trying to find some way to wipe the makeup off of her hands. All she managed to do was smear it further into her skin, and she didn't want to rub it off on her brand new clothes. What had happened to the tissues they had on the bedside table? And her hand lotion was gone. Seriously, was that how Kyle spent the night without her?

Without saying anything else, Kyle came into the room. "Hey," he murmured hesitantly. His face fell when he saw hers, the smears of paint and tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"What for? This was stupid."

"It's important to you."

"I'm being such a fucking girl," she sneered, shaking her head. "It was stupid. I can't be like them. I can't do this and make it look like I want to be this way. I can't be soft, I can't be nice, I can't do this right—"

Kyle grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly. Sarah got up on her tip toes to keep herself from being bent over backward, and she could easily feel the desperation and lust in his touch. She caught hold of his shirt, makeup smearing across it and the top of her new blouse without her realizing it.

"You're better than you think you are. You're more important than you think you are," he growled against her mouth. "Maybe history doesn't talk about you because John wanted to protect you. Because your memory was too precious to share. I know I can't share you, I can't leave you alone."

"You love who you think I am. I'm an asshole, Kyle, and you deserve better—"

 _"Never_ say that about yourself in front of me again," he said, and she could see the echoes of the military in his stance. He would have been fierce and determined as a fighter, and he would do whatever it took to get the job done. "You're human," he said, eyes blazing as he looked down at her. "No more, no less."

"Some legend, huh? You must be so disappointed," Sarah began lamely.

"I see someone who survived, who continues to survive. I see someone trading one kind of armor for another," he said, cupping her chin in his hands. "I see war paint, Sarah. You're fighting so hard to find a future for yourself, to be more than just an observer. I don't have that. I don't know where to begin, to even start. It's too different, and the flashes of what I saw in the other version of me make no sense." His hands dropped from her face and his shoulders sagged. "Maybe there's a little truth in what you said. Maybe he used me. Maybe that's the only reason why he found me in the first place."

"He was your friend," Sarah said. "Shitty, but he was."

"Yeah. I think he liked me, respected me. I was one of his best, he saw to that." There was a mournful expression on his face, and Sarah couldn't help but touch his cheek and bite her lip, sorry she had put it there. "I had other friends, but it was different, because we could die at any moment. Or there were transfers to different units based on skill sets. It was hard to get close to someone when you could see them shot up to pieces without any warning. But John... He survived it all, and it was easy for him to be everybody's rock, for all of us to rely on him."

"That's not healthy."

"What was in that life?" Kyle challenged.

Sarah had no answer for him, and felt small because of that.

"You're braver than I am. Maybe you call it being an asshole, but I see it as being brave to keep going, not being afraid of what this future is going to be."

"It was just clothes and makeup," Sarah whispered.

"You look good, by the way," he said, voice faltering.

"What are we doing, Kyle?" Sarah asked, her voice cracking a little. He deserved better than her, someone who could make him whole, give him a future he didn't have to be afraid of.

She must have mumbled some of that, because he shook his head. "I'll always be afraid of the future, Sarah. I can't not. I can't stop being on guard. It wasn't Skynet this time, it was Genisys. It could be anything next time."

Sarah blinked away tears. "It should be done. It should be over. This is what you came for, after all. You saved my life. You saved the future. You should have some of it back. You shouldn't have to still be on guard."

He cupped her face in one hand and pulled her close with his other. "Someone has to. The people in this time don't know what to expect. They won't know what to expect. We do."

"Don't we get a chance to start over? To be something different? To take off the armor?"

"I don't know how else to be," he replied sadly. "And I don't think you do, either."

"So this is our future? Save it from being the fucked up monstrosity you remember? Try to fit in in the meantime?" He voice was bitter. "I'm so tired of that bullshit."

"I know," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her again. This time, she let him bend her over and lay her down on the bed. He removed her clothes gently, reverently, lips brushing across her skin as it was exposed. His touch was soft, delicate, conveying without words that he worshiped her, adored her despite her faults, would do anything at all for her.

All she was capable of doing at the time was letting his mouth roam over her skin, lick into the cleft between her legs. She grasped the hair on his head to keep him in place, arching up as his tongue found her clit and cleverly fell back into the rhythm that he knew she liked. Sarah kept her eyes shut as she gasped and moaned, bucked against his face and arched as she approached orgasm. Kyle brought her over that precipice, lapping at her until her breathing evened out, and stretched out over her.

His lips were shiny and his eyes worshipful. She helped him strip off his clothes and slide on the condom, even though she felt the dirty smears of makeup on her hands was rather a good analogy for how messed up her life had been from the start.

Kyle sliding his cock into her was comfortable and wonderful, though. This felt like home. This felt proper. This part felt right, something she definitely couldn't screw up.

When Sarah came again, she sank her teeth into the meat of his shoulder, and Kyle cried out in ecstasy. He jerked inside her, muscles tensing beneath her fingertips before his entire body relaxed and his expression smoothed out.

She cradled him close, his erratic heartbeat a counterpoint to her ragged breathing. This was probably the first time in a long time that she hadn't directed the sex or ordered him to do something kinky. If she had to call it something, she would have said that it was lovemaking, it was comforting, it was fusing their bodies together.

For some reason, that thought hurt her more than the thought of him not needing her.

***  
***


	7. Concern And Guilt

"What the hell is all this?" Sarah asked abruptly, seeing a pile of books on the kitchen table instead of Pops' ubiquitous engine parts to clean and reassemble.

She grabbed the books before Pops could even answer, and didn't quite make sense of the titles; they seemed to be psychology books on self esteem, depression, relationships and how to make problematic relationships work. "The hell? Pops?"

"You recall your argument with Kyle Reese several weeks ago."

"Of course I do," she said with a scowl, tossing the books back down onto the table in a sloppy pile, not even looking when some skidded across the table to fall on the floor. "So? What does that have to do with anything?"

"You have been irritable and sad."

"Who wouldn't be, with the kind of life we have?"

"With decreased interest in activities—"

"We can't exactly go anywhere, and it's not like I ever learned any hobbies. Unless you count cleaning weapons and target shooting."

"—difficulty with sleep, some lack of appetite, decreased energy, decreased sex drive—"

"Oh, my god, Pops, I am _not_ discussing my sex life with you!"

"—but I am unsure if there is hopelessness or helplessness. You have always been strong and trained frequently, so I would not believe you feel helpless. You _do_ feel worthless, and that has become more apparent to me."

"The hell are you talking about?"

"I have not seen evidence of self harm and there have been no suicide attempts. I have seen evidence of guilt that you carry that is irrational, particularly with regards to Kyle Reese. Have you had auditory or visual hallucinations?" Pops asked abruptly.

"Holy fuck, Pops!" Sarah cried incredulously. "No! What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I have gone through the diagnostic criteria for major depression as delineated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition," Pops intoned. "Aside from the depressed mood, which must be present for at least two weeks to qualify as a mood episode, you would need at least five other symptoms that are not better explained for by other medical issues or other psychiatric illnesses."

"I don't have a psychiatric illness!"

"Negative," Pops replied. His expression was that same blank earnest one he tended to get when Sarah had her tantrums as a child. She had to eat her vegetables, she had to have some kind of calcium rich food, she had to have protein and grains. She would not have any sweets or unhealthy items that could impede her ability to grow. "You exhibit all the symptoms that are required to assign the diagnosis of major depressive disorder, moderate in severity, without psychotic features."

"I'll show you psychotic," Sarah grumbled, wishing for a gun.

"Psychosis as a medical term refers to the disconnect from appreciating reality as it is. Modern media has corrupted the true meaning of the term to refer to violent impulses."

"Oh, I've got the violent impulses."

"In trying to defeat the other Terminators, such impulses were appropriate. You have successfully curbed them in inappropriate situations, such as going to work or attending classes at college. I do not see you becoming inappropriately violent toward Kyle Reese, even when you are upset with him or say demeaning things."

"God, Pops," Sarah said, turning away from him and stomping her foot while covering her face with her hands. "You need to fucking shut up."

"Remaining silent will not make these symptoms go away. The natural progression of a depressed episode can last over a year on average. The use of therapy and medication can decrease the severity and length of a depressive episode."

"Jesus Christ, I don't believe this."

"You must believe it. I am to care for your wellbeing, and that concerns mental health as well as physical health. Earlier, the primary focus has been on physical health and keeping you alive. I see this is not enough, and that there should have been focus on coping skills and creating a proper outlet for your emotions. It was not added as part of my programming, but I have corrected the error and will now account for it as well as for Kyle Reese."

Sarah stopped and looked at him. "What?"

"He displays characteristics of post traumatic stress disorder, as well as complicated bereavement and possibly also major depressive disorder. It could also be generalized anxiety disorder, however, because he does not share his thought processes with me."

She plopped down heavily on a chair opposite Pops. "So we're both fucked up, you're saying."

"Negative. Both of you can correct these errors in your functioning by applying the proper treatments. They are common responses to trauma and loss, and neither of you have had the support network necessary to limit the severity of them. I am a support, but emotions are not natural to machinery." He smiled, that eerie grimace that spooked too many people that saw it, and Sarah winced. "Precisely."

Blowing out a long breath, Sarah picked up one of the books. "So you're saying I need a therapist. But talking about all the shit that went down is going to have them call me crazy and get me locked up in a psych ward somewhere."

"It did happen to the alternate version of Sarah Connor."

Giving him a sour look, Sarah tossed the book back down. "You're not making me feel very comfortable about psychiatry and therapy and that kind of shit."

"We will need to take a professional into our confidence."

"Oh, hell, no!"

"Detective O'Brien is aware of your status as time travelers."

"His fellow officers thought he was crazy, remember?"

"You must begin to speak with others that can be trusted." Pops' tone brooked no argument. "The texts of this time are clear that an outside perspective is necessary for therapy to be effective, and that a therapeutic rapport must be reached."

"And you told me not to trust anyone!" Sarah snapped, turning back to Pops with an intense look. "So what is it? Don't trust them, or trust them?"

"Trust certain ones," Pops declared. He gave Sarah a long look. "Kyle Reese's concerns of Skynet are not entirely unfounded. Time paradoxes are well documented in science fiction and in theory of time and energy. That this future has continued without any apparent ripple effects means some form of Skynet still develops."

"Well, fuck. We did all this for nothing!"

"Judgment Day didn't happen as it was originally foretold," Pops reminded her. "Genisys wasn't released on schedule. The future we knew of has been delayed or altered in such a way that we no longer affect it."

"So what does that mean?" Sarah demanded. "Someone else gets to have a fucked up fate?"

"Possibly," Pops told her, implacable as ever. "Your only concern is your own."

Kyle would be home from work soon. Unable to bear seeing him at the moment, she pressed her lips together. "I'm going out. I need to think."

"You may think properly in this apartment."

"Not like this, I can't!"

Sarah left with a perfectly executed flounce, one she hadn't done since she was twelve.

***

Sarah didn't know where she wandered to, as she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. That was never a good idea, and she knew better than that usually, but for some reason she was fixated on Pops' assertion that she was depressed. It didn't feel right, but it didn't feel wrong, either. If Pops said something to Kyle, though, would he run in the opposite direction? In Kyle's version of the future, people were herded into work camps to do all the tasks that machines couldn't, and were killed off in droves. They'd avoid the stink of illness and incapacity of any kind, and Kyle would know that depression was an illness, right? If she did, he had to know that, and how would he be able to look at her if she was sick? How would _she_ be able to look at herself and not think there was something wrong with her?

Before she knew it, she was running into exactly the one person in all of San Francisco that she didn't want to see. Kyle was leaving a diner with a coworker of his, a fairly tall and muscular black man with closely cropped hair, an easy smile and a slight gap between his two front teeth. He had a loose denim shirt on over a paint-stained undershirt and jeans. His work boots were just as beat up and thick soled as Kyle's, and Sarah could easily spot the calluses on his hands from years of construction work.

She suddenly realized that she didn't know his name, just as she didn't know any other of his coworkers, but Kyle knew the name and history of her new friend. Wow, she really was an asshole to him, wasn't she?

Kyle lit up when he saw her, which only seemed to twist the knife in her chest. "Sarah!"

"Oh, this is the famous Sarah," Kyle's friend said, grinning in her direction. Shit, she felt low.

The smile she pasted onto her face was a wilted one, and she gave a halfhearted wave. "Um. Hi."

"You didn't have to meet us," Kyle told her. "Or were you worried about me?"

"I know you can handle yourself," she said. He could, and she really didn't worry about that with him. Even without knowing the name of his friend, the man gave off the vibe of a very mellow and down to earth guy. That was exactly the kind of person that Kyle needed in his life.

"I'm Grant," Kyle's friend said, sticking his hand out for her to shake.

Wow, he even knew how awkward she felt not knowing his name. "Hey. You work with Kyle for very long?" she asked. He didn't seem familiar from the other work site she had seen.

"Since this guy joined the team," Grant said with a grin, like he was proud of Kyle.

Somehow, Sarah got pulled into the pair's trek back to the apartment, and she felt off and awful the entire time. Grant seemed like a nice guy, and she chatted with him on autopilot, rather like the way she used to with gangers back in LA. He laughed at the dumb jokes she made, even after she confessed getting them from Natalie. "I'll see you Monday, man," he told Kyle with a grin when they got to the entrance to the building. "I see why you talk about her the way you do," he added. Maybe Sarah wasn't meant to hear that; she had already gone inside and Kyle was going to lock up. The tone of Grant's voice was jovial, so Kyle had to have said something nice about her, and it felt like a lie.

"You're not feeling well, are you?" Kyle asked as soon as they were back inside the apartment. And thank God, Pops wasn't at the kitchen table. The books still were, though.

"Why do you say that?" she asked defensively. Maybe if she looked at anywhere else in the apartment but him? She probably had some kind of homework to do...

"You're acting weird. You were funny. Usually you're intense, or you're on top of everything—"

"Pops thinks I'm depressed," Sarah blurted, then wanted to kick herself. She was usually good at keeping things to herself. Secrets were her forte.

"Are you?" Kyle asked, brows furrowing in concern but not disgust.

"I don't know," she said, turning away from him for a moment. She turned back at him. "Why are you with me? Really? Because you have to? Because I'm the only one that'll understand what happened with Skynet?"

"Where is this coming from?" Kyle asked.

Sarah hurt to hear the guarded tone in his voice. "It's true, isn't it? You've been thinking about all of this that's happened, and you're regretting coming back, aren't you?"

Something changed in his expression, a strain that was a little more evident; it clearly had been there the whole time, but Sarah had apparently missed it. She had been so caught up in her own worries about fitting in and not jumping at shadows anymore that she had been ignoring the fact that Kyle was in the same position. Maybe worse, actually. Things had gone better when she had paid more attention to him, when she was calling the shots and giving him a place to belong in this world. Since their argument, Sarah had kept her distance, leaving him more alone in his own head. If Pops thought she was depressed, what did he think of Kyle?

"There was always the mission," Kyle said. She didn't know what emotion was fueling the odd note in his voice, but it had to be something dark and unhappy. "John saved me, you know. No matter what timeline, apparently. He was always saving me, always looking out for me."

And she had said John was a shitty friend. Sarah winced at her poor choice of words.

"But if there was an ulterior motive," Kyle continued, eyes locked on her face, "if it wasn't just concern for me, if it wasn't just friendship—"

"Don't, Kyle," Sarah warned, knowing that the creeping dread in her gut was leading somewhere very bad very fast. "Don't say—"

"Then he was using me. And every decision he ever made when it came to me is called into question now," Kyle continued relentlessly. Because of course he thought about this. She wasn't there to stop that train of thought, wasn't there to command him to do something else, and he was just as broken as she was.

"God, Kyle, please don't—"

"I used to be proud of the fact that I was chosen for important missions. That I was trusted enough to know the details, that I could work alone. But it was deliberate, wasn't it?" There was a bitterness in his voice that made Sarah ache to hear. "After all, we can't have me getting too attached to anyone else. Friends would hold me back. Can't let me want to know any other girls if I'm supposed to come back and love you."

Sarah flinched and her lips trembled. "You're mission oriented—"

"And he helped make me that way," Kyle snapped, an angry snarl in his voice she hadn't heard before. "He made me care about the mission more than my own life. No point in getting attached to men in my unit, because they were all going to die anyway. Any time I get close to a woman, she gets reassigned to another team several states away. He tells me stories about you, about the past that we don't remember. And it's a way to control me, isn't it?" The pain in his expression made Sarah tear up and bite her lip. "His priority wasn't _me,_ not as the friend that I thought he was. He just needed me to volunteer to go to the past. He needed me to meet you, to fall in love you, to become his father."

"You saved lives," Sarah said, her voice feeling raw and wrenched out of her. The words felt pathetic, a paltry excuse of a positive, and it was all she could give him.

"Side benefit," Kyle replied with a sneer, and Sarah felt the tears begin to spill. "Everything was manufactured. Manipulated. Maybe he wasn't even infected when I got sent back. Maybe it was always that way. He was always a son of a bitch. I guess I never realized how far back it actually went, how much of a bastard he actually was."

"He was your friend, though," Sarah said, feeling something shatter inside of her and slip out of her hands, not knowing how to fix it.

"Shitty friend, as you keep pointing out."

"Maybe you're better off without us, then," she whispered, her voice breaking. "Connors just fuck up your life. I'm surprised you don't hate me after all of this, after what's happened. We just ruin everything."

At the same time she said the words, another part of her was screaming at him not to leave, that she would be alone again, that everything would be _empty,_ and the entire meaning of her life would be gone.

Kyle turned away, not saying a word for a long moment. She was so sure he was going to leave, that he would choose to strike out on his own. Or with Grant, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and he and Kyle's work buddies _laughed._ She could fuck Kyle, she could command him, she could drive him to his knees. But she didn't know how to be soft, to be the kind of girl that he had expected to find when he had gone back.

She ruined everything, and John had gotten that from her, too.

"Is that what you think?" Kyle asked, his voice strained.

"What else can I think?"

He turned back to look at her, and simply stared for a moment. "There's plenty of other things that you could think."

"Like what?" Sarah asked, resentment and disbelief bubbling up in spite of wanting to push the words back down her throat. "Our son was a shitty friend that warped you and manipulated you from the get-go to ensure that he would be conceived. He kept you from making friends, from figuring out what he was doing. You lost your parents and your perfect house and wonderful life because of the machines trying to wipe out humanity. You almost died so many times, and don't even tell me you haven't, because I've seen the scars all over your body. I know you were at a work camp, I know you've talked about experiments, and somehow you still managed to get a tattoo on your arm like it's no big deal."

His lips thinned in discomfort, and Sarah knew she was probably triggering some kind of awful memory. She really should have tamped down on her urge to talk. But it was like the floodgates were opened, and all the dregs of her soul were spilling out in spite of herself.

"Anyone you might've cared about was gone. Either John got rid of them, or they died. So you fix your attention on someone that won't ever go away, and John of course will love that. You're stuck with him, and he wants you to go back. So you convince yourself that you love me, that I need saving. You tell yourself that I need it, and that you'll fix everything like you couldn't for your future. You buried everyone else but your idea of me, after all—"

"You need to stop now," Kyle said, voice low and aching.

"—but then I show up, and I'm nothing like the stories. I'm not what you imagined at all, I know that. I'm worse. I'm a bitch, I'm heartless, I'm a liar. I'm nothing of what anyone ever said, because of course my son is an asshole, and he's only going to give you the pretty bits, the stories that you need to have to love me. It doesn't even matter what he said, does it? He probably lied, probably put together whatever he wanted to once he realized what you wanted to hear. That's all it ever was, twisting you into someone who would be more than willing to be a baby daddy. John wouldn't have told you, but he was sending you back to fuck me and die. And if that's not utterly fucked up, I don't know what is."

Emotions warred on Kyle's face, and Sarah wished suddenly she knew what he was thinking. Or that she had stopped herself from saying such horrible things to him.

"People see what they want to see," Kyle said after a long moment. His voice sounded raw and pained, and Sarah could feel the tears on her face burning hot. She deserved that, though. She had hurt him, and it was only fair that she hurt a little in return.

"I'm sorry we ruined your life," she said weakly, sniffling a little. "I'm sorry we're such shitty people to you."

He could walk out the door of the apartment, never looking back. He could tell her that he hated her, that yes, she ruined his life and all the hope he had for this future. He could tell her that she ruined his memories of his best friend, of his comrades, and rendered all his past struggles pointless. He could tell her he was leaving. He could find some other way to support himself, and plenty of his coworkers would put him up for the night or indefinitely. He had friends, he didn't need her and Pops.

She was the pathetic one. She was the one that drove everyone away.

In her wildest dreams, maybe he would pull her close and comfort her as she cried. Maybe he would tell her that she wasn't the bitchy asshole she thought she was. Maybe he would tell her again that he loved her anyway, that he could forgive her for being the awful person that she had become, instead of the helpless girl he had thought he was getting.

The silence stretched out, and Sarah wiped at her face. It was awkward and painful, and Sarah didn't know what Kyle would do next.

"You aren't the one that ruined my life," Kyle said finally, when she was done sniffling.

"But I haven't helped," Sarah began.

"And I won't have you ruining your own," he continued.

To her infinite surprise, Kyle did something Sarah never thought he would: he bent down to kiss her forehead, then pushed her toward bed. "Go to sleep. It'll seem less terrible in the morning."

"We're still going to be in the same place as now."

"I know. But everything looks worse when it's dark and you're tired," Kyle replied. "Sleep. We'll talk more about it in the morning," he said. There was a weary slump in his shoulders, and Sarah wanted to reach out to him, to beg him to forgive her.

Her damn pride kept her lips glued shut.

That seemed to make Kyle even sadder, and she wanted to kick herself. Look at her, she couldn't even do silence right. She was hurting him even without trying, without saying a word, and that had to be the most awful talent she had.

Sarah looked around the bedroom and knew she couldn't stay in there, remembering the feel of his skin or the way he felt beneath her. She didn't deserve those reminders. And he should have the bed to sleep in, not the couch and Pops keeping the light on in the living room.

When it sounded like Kyle was in the bathroom, she was the one to leave. She had nothing with her but her wallet and cell phone, and nowhere to go.

What a loser.

***  
***


	8. Miles From Where You Are

"I'm a shitty human being."

Natalie frowned at Sarah and didn't even take another bite of her sandwich. "Wait, what?"

"Haven't you been listening?"

"Yes, but it's also very obvious that you were leaving out quite a few choice bits of the conversation you had. Now, I'm sure it's none of my damn business," she added, holding up a hand when Sarah opened her mouth. "But you should also be _home_ with _your boyfriend,_ and telling him all this."

Sarah sighed. "Me talking to him is what got me into this mess."

"No, you lashing out and saying shitty things is what got you into this mess. You are not a shitty human being. You're a human being that makes shitty decisions. Not the same thing, trust me."

"Because you had your share of shitty decisions?"

Narrowing her eyes at Sarah, Natalie put her sandwich down. They were sitting in her kitchen, the radio playing something softly in the background. "You are trying very hard to make everyone around you as unhappy as you are. I don't know why, and honestly, I don't fucking care. Yes, I've had my share of shitty decisions," Natalie ground out, making Sarah feel small and horrible. "So I recognize them when someone else makes the same dumbass decisions. And I am telling you now, _go home._ Tell Kyle that you're a mess and you want to fix it, because it's obvious you do."

"Pops thinks I'm depressed," Sarah blurted.

"No," Natalie said, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Of course you're depressed. You don't screw up a perfectly good life just for shits and giggles."

"It's not— I'm not— Jesus, my parents are _dead,_ it was not a good life!" Sarah sputtered.

Her expression held no pity. "Yeah. So's my Dad. Think you're the only one that lost someone? That did something lame or stupid or completely fucked up?" She pulled out her phone and started thumbing through the contacts.

"I should go..."

"Sit your ass down," Natalie snapped, nodding at the chair across from her.

Cowed, Sarah sat and watched as Natalie called someone. Was she calling Kyle?

"Hey, mind if I come over for a bit?" she asked without preamble. She listened, and shot Sarah a look meant to keep her in place. "No, it's not that. I've been good. But... You can knock the sense into a brick, and I know someone that's an emotional brick. Think you can help?" Listening for a moment, Natalie nodded. "Thanks. We'll be there in fifteen."

Sarah at least waited until the phone call was disconnected. "Where are we going?"

"Lars' basement," Natalie said, wrapping her sandwich up and sticking it into a plastic baggie. "I would offer you a drink, but that'll be cheating and you should be sober."

"The hell are you talking about?"

Natalie still wasn't taking pity on Sarah's confusion. "You and I are taking a walk. And I am going to finish my dinner on the way."

Now Sarah frowned, feeling awful. "I'm sorry, Nat—"

"If I hear one more 'I'm sorry,' I'm going to shake you until your teeth rattle and your brains are all rearranged," Natalie snapped.

So she shut her mouth and followed Natalie over to a different brownstone and headed around the back to the basement apartment. A very tall, thin and blond man opened the door when Natalie knocked. That had to be Lars, and by the name, Sarah would've thought he was from Sweden or Norway or something like that.

"Natalie, my dear," he said, no accent at all. His eyes skipped past her to land on Sarah, and she managed not to fidget. "The emotional brick, I take it?"

"Got it in one."

"Come in, come in."

Sarah didn't know what to expect, and a very nice looking living space certainly wasn't it. If she didn't know it was a basement, she would have thought it was a very nice, upscale one bedroom apartment somewhere downtown. There were photos of Lars with friends, and elaborately framed photos of Lars holding hands with a man with darker skin that could have been Hispanic or Middle Eastern, Sarah couldn't tell which. Lars carried himself with confidence, and he had a mug of tea and a book on the table beside him. She sat where he pointed to, perched precariously on the edge of the Louis XIV chair.

"Get comfortable. It's a reproduction," Lars told her.

"Look, I don't even know what this is about," Sarah began.

"She's fucking up something good in her life because she's depressed," Natalie said flatly.

"Start at the beginning," Lars suggested, taking in Sarah's unease.

Twisting her fingers together, Sarah looked down. "I should go."

"Start with your name," Lars said gently. "Nat didn't even tell it to me."

"S-Sarah," she began, surprised her voice started to hitch. Then to her horror, she burst into tears.

Lars sat down next to her and wordlessly pulled her into an embrace. Sarah sobbed, the howling, choking sounds she almost wished Kyle could see instead of this stranger. But once she started, she couldn't stop, and she didn't know how she could explain this to Lars or Natalie. She had been lying for so long, hiding the truth, and it was second nature to hold something back. But the two didn't seem to hate this or think less of her; if anything, Natalie's expression softened and she was more willing to hold onto Sarah's hand until she was all cried out.

"You probably feel really embarrassed by that," Lars said gently. "Most do. So I'll start, if that makes it feel a little easier. I was a crack fiend through most of the 90's," Lars said. "This place is all I have left, and only because my aunt owns the building. My parents already disowned me in the 80's when I came out, and she was the last person in my life that cared what happened. She promised me that if I could stay clean, I would have a place to stay. But if I ever showed up high or drunk, or any of my friends did, I would be tossed out."

That explained why Sarah had to be sober. She felt small and insignificant. "You'll think I'm crazy," she stuttered.

"You're talking to people that have seen rock bottom," Lars told her. "What have you got to lose?" he asked, shrugging.

"C'mon, Sarah," Natalie said, her voice much softer than it had been a half hour before. "Don't compound the stupid, shitty mistakes you've already made."

She trusted Natalie, and Natalie trusted Lars. She supposed it had to count for something, and she had to start somewhere.

Closing her eyes, Sarah began to talk. And to her surprise, telling the truth from the very beginning was easier than she thought it would be.

***

Natalie insisted on walking Sarah home to be sure she didn't "punk out and flee" somewhere else in the city. As a result, she was there to see Pops pacing incessantly in the kitchen, and actually backed up a half step when he approached Sarah with an intense look. "Kyle Reese thought you were abducted," he intoned. "You are physically unharmed."

"I... I went to talk to Nat and a friend."

"He left you many messages."

Frowning, Sarah pulled out her phone from her back pocket. It was dead, which explained why she hadn't gotten anything, and why Kyle would be so freaked out. "Phone's dead."

"You really are a dumbass sometimes," Nat informed her, shaking her head.

Sarah sighed and rubbed at her face. "Where did he say he was going?"

"He contacted Grant and Andrew," Pops said. "They are assisting in the search."

Without being asked, Natalie handed her phone over to Sarah. "Call him."

Sarah winced. "Now I feel even more stupid."

"And he's freaking the fuck out. _Call him,"_ Natalie insisted, shaking her phone at him.

"Where is he?" she asked Pops.

"Searching for you."

"No, I mean, scan for his phone's signal. You'll know exactly where he's at right now." At his pause, Sarah sighed again. "She knows. I told her."

Pops scowled at Sarah. "This is potentially a dire security breach and must be corrected."

"Well, I know the dealio about you and the future that will never be, which explains a helluva lot," Natalie said. She took a breath and pursed her lips. "I'm not sure if I'm ready to actually deal with it, but here we are."

After a moment, he nodded. "They are at Grant's home."

"Gimme the address," Natalie demanded. "I'm taking you right there," she told Sarah before she could protest. "You're not punking out on this, not when he thinks you were probably ghosted by some machine you guys missed."

Not having thought of that, Sarah blanched. "Okay."

"Remember," Natalie said, tugging on her arm. "One step at a time," she added. Looking up at Pops, she tried to paste a smile on her face. "You weird me out, man, but now I know why."

"And this pleases you?"

"Knowing? Knowing is half the battle, dude." She tugged again on Sarah's arm. "We're out."

Sarah couldn't even remember most of the walk to Grant's apartment building, but was physically exhausted and emotionally wrung out. Fuck class the next day.

"I'm with you on that one," Natalie said emphatically. "It's your math class, though, and you said you had a quiz."

"Oh, I said that out loud? Fuck the quiz. I'm just taking classes to be busy because I don't know what the hell to do with my life."

"We're in California. Do something artsy. That way you can explain being a flake by saying 'I'm an artist,' or some bullshit, and it explains everything."

"I can't paint worth a damn."

"How do you know? And besides, I took art appreciation already. Some guys made money drizzling paint everywhere, another dude got famous painting colored squares on things, and there's always sculpture! It can look like any damn thing, and someone somewhere will think you're a revolutionary genius. Or hey, write your story down and be a famous scifi author. You get to vent _and_ make money."

It was so ridiculous, she couldn't help but laugh. But it was hysterical laughter, the kind that dissolved into hiccups by the time they got to Grant's apartment, and it was only too apparent that Sarah was a goddamn mess when he opened the door. She could see that Kyle had gone there because of the huge CB radio and police scanner that they had been sitting in front of, probably trying to listen for leads on her whereabouts.

That made Sarah feel about ten inches tall, and she cringed as Kyle hugged her tight. He of course took it the wrong way, asking immediately if she had tried to do something to hurt herself, or if she had been attacked or mugged.

Natalie took it upon herself to make the introductions with Grant. "I know the whole story," she told Kyle meaningfully, "and how much of a dumbass your girlfriend is. But I understand it, and living out here without family just sucks balls."

Grant looked between the rest of them and smiled wanly in spite of the tension that had risen in the prior two hours. "She's lucky to have you, then."

"Yes, she is," Natalie replied with a smile. "Kyle's lucky to have you, too. He needs somebody steady to balance out the ball of repressed emotions there."

"I heard that," Sarah grumbled from within Kyle's desperate grip.

"I know," she said sweetly. "And if you try to bottle them up again instead of spilling your guts to Kyle like you know you should, I'll do it for you."

"Because I made friends with a sadistic bitch. That's why you weren't scared of me."

"Of course," Natalie said sweetly. "But also because I love you."

The words were so easily tossed off, but it made Sarah's heart tighten anyway. For a split second, the flippant tone was so familiar, and she couldn't help but cry again. That startled Kyle and made Grant uncomfortable; he'd only met her several hours before, after all.

"Is it rude if we leave them here and we go invade your kitchen?" Natalie suggested, taking hold of Grant's arm. "She came over to my place and interrupted my pathetic excuse of a dinner, and I've been walking all over the city with her all night."

"I went past your house and tried your number," Kyle said, frowning.

"I wasn't home. I took her to meet a friend of mine to unload. He's pretty good at listening and making you feel like less of a douchebag."

"Good friend," Grant commented.

"The best. Helped me through a rough time, so I figured Sarah could use another good ear to talk to besides mine. Though I am awesome," she added playfully, grinning at Grant.

"I'll get you a Coke and you can tell me what's going on?"

"Just the public access bits," Natalie promised. "The rest of it they have to figure out between themselves." She said that last part with a pointed look at Sarah.

"Fair enough," Grant agreed, nodding. "I take it you go to school with Sarah?"

"Yeah. And you work with Kyle." She squeezed his bicep. "And are probably very good at what you do," she said.

"You always manhandle total strangers?" Grant asked, eyeing her carefully. He clearly felt in over his head, but was willing to help Kyle find Sarah.

"I do when I'm trying to make a sad friend smile," Natalie replied easily as they crossed into the kitchen. "Too bad it didn't work. But nice guns, though."

Sarah stopped paying attention to them to rub at her eyes and sniffle. "I'm sorry. For everything," she mumbled, not able to meet Kyle's eyes. "I'm being stupid."

"Stop it," Kyle told her in his fierce, determined tone. His gaze was intense, and he held onto her shoulders as he stared at her. "You're doing the same thing I was doing, but it's all backward. I was going over everything with John, figuring out if any of it was genuine, if there was any hope of something more than being used."

"I know, I'm sorry, I've ruined whatever memories you had of him." She sniffled again and rubbed at her face. "He was awful, but I was worse to you. I didn't think about that, I just wanted to protect you, and—"

"You never let me finish," Kyle interrupted.

"What more is there to say? He used you. I've used you. There's nothing real there."

"See, that's the thing. I really think there was. Anyone could've gone back. Anyone could've been his father. But he didn't have to tell me stories about growing up or about you. Yeah, he talked to everyone about what it was like, because we needed to hear something other than what a shithole our lives had become. There was more than just manipulating me, though. Maybe it started that way, but there was a core of genuine emotion, too."

"You're being too optimistic—"

"And you want to think you're only using me for sex. But I think you're just scared that this isn't real, too. All that talk of fate from before. Thinking back, my nightmares set all this off. We were fine until then, until I told you how much I worried about hurting you."

"And I told you that you were being stupid."

"You know, I think in some kind of weird way, you're trying to protect me, like you said just now," Kyle murmured.

"I'm full of shit, Kyle," Sarah said, shaking his head. "I'll say just about anything to get the job done, you should know that by now."

"No, it wasn't that." He reached out for her, rubbing her arm gently. "You're doing what you know how to do, and that's fight."

"Yeah. That's what I do. It's what I've always done."

"Exactly. We don't talk."

"This is pointless—"

"And you're hiding again," Kyle said, holding onto her tightly when she tried to pull away. "We don't talk, we don't know how to say it in words. All we're used to is nightmares and not talking about them, just going on because we have to. But now we don't have to. And that's just as scary as having to fight, but this we don't know how to do."

"Do you have a point?" Sarah asked, voice harsh and angry to cover up the fear that he was about to leave. He could do better. He could stay with Grant, he could find someone normal and not broken in some kind of fundamental way like she was.

"Yeah. You don't know how to fix the nightmares I have, so you tried to drive me away. But there was something in what you said. I've had time to think about it, but I don't think you really thought about what you said."

"I hurt you," Sarah said. "And I've been petty and selfish."

"I can't stand down, not really," Kyle said, ignoring her words. "And you think it's because I don't have a choice. That none of this has ever been my choice."

"Because it wasn't," Sarah stubbornly told him, eyes starting to water again. Too many fucking useless stupid tears. Ten years' worth of tears, probably.

"He told me stories," Kyle continued. "He told all of us stories. Maybe he did it so that I would stay in the field and not want to protect the families in the countryside. Maybe he transferred everyone away from my unit so that I couldn't really bond with anyone else. Maybe he tried to ensure that he would exist, that I would want to come forward to go to the past. But that was still my choice. Even before we turned on that machine, he checked to make sure I wanted to go. I knew it was a one way trip, Sarah. None of us knew how to get back, after all. If you can only go back naked, and you can't take anything with you, you're stuck whenever you go."

Sarah sobbed a little; she hadn't ever considered that.

"So I knew I was leaving him behind. I knew I was leaving everything else behind, and I still went, because I knew it was for the sake of the mission. I knew it was to protect you, to protect humanity. I knew I could die, and I went back anyway. _That was my choice._ And maybe I had loved stories, but they had to be based on something true."

"He would've told you all the good bits, to make you love me."

Kyle cupped her face in his hands as the tears spilled over. "All of them would have been based on something. There's something in you that's good, that's faithful, that's strong. I don't know how to be anything else but a soldier, and you're the same way now. But we don't know what we're fighting for anymore, and it's terrifying."

Sarah's lips trembled. "I can't keep you from the future you deserve, Kyle. You deserve someone whole, someone that doesn't need fixing."

"No," he said, expression softening with love. "You don't need fixing. You need a home. You need something to protect, something to _do."_ He caressed her cheek with one hand, the other stroking her back. "Just like I do. That's what we've been missing. We've been fighting each other, and you've been fighting this thing between us. Because we don't know what else to be. But if we use it, protect the people we know now, make sure nothing else is coming, build up enough people we trust, we can feel safe."

"I don't think I'll ever feel safe. And you probably won't either."

"Probably not," Kyle admitted with a sigh. "But I'm willing to try."

"You should be able to move on, have a real life somewhere. Have something normal. I can't give you that, Kyle. I don't know what that is."

"I know. But I don't think you've been listening to my side of our arguments. You're afraid I don't want to be here. That I'd choose to walk away."

"If you were smart, you would."

"Then I guess I'm just as big a dumbass as you are," Kyle murmured, then leaned down to kiss her on the mouth. It was long and slow, every bit of his emotions clear in his touch. "I choose to stay, Sarah. We work better together. You're what I want. You see me, all of me, and know everything there is to know. You want the best for me, just like I want the best for you. We'll mess up, just like we have been. But then we have to figure out how to start over."

"Is that what we're doing now?" she asked in a small voice.

"I want to," Kyle told her earnestly. "Do you?"

"Why don't you hate me?" Sarah asked instead of answering _Yes!_

His fingers trailed down her cheek, his expression soft and tender. "I love you, Sarah. I hate the things you say, sometimes. I hate the way you think you're nothing. I hate the way you hide from the things you want and think you don't deserve them. We've earned this future together, Sarah. I know we have. And we can figure out what to do with it together."

"I might say something that upsets you."

"I can upset you, too." His expression was rueful. "Nightmares. Remembering. Thinking of John as mostly a friend." His hands rested on her shoulders again. "We have to keep moving. We can't stay still, buried with our memories. It's the only way we know how to go on."

Lips trembling, Sarah pulled him in for a tight hug. "You _do_ feel like home to me," she murmured. "Like I shouldn't fight this fate. Like it was really meant to be, and not just because of what someone else decided."

Kyle held her tightly and kissed the top of her head. "Then let's not fight this one thing."

Sarah grabbed the back of his shirt as she buried her face against his chest. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you."

"Survive. Like I'd have to survive if something happened to you," he said sadly. "That's what we know how to do. And I'd be just as pissed off if you killed yourself or allowed yourself to die if I did as you would be if I killed myself after you died."

"God, we're such a mess." There was a sharp burst of bitter laughter.

"We fit," Kyle murmured simply.

She shook her head against his chest, still laughing. "I want to be better. I want to be someone you deserve. But I don't know how. Maybe I can't ever be that person."

"It's enough that you want to."

Sarah looked up, her eyes shimmering with tears. "No, it's not. I should be better."

"You can't change overnight, Sarah," Kyle said gently. "If the makeup and clothes and stuff was a new kind of armor, think of this as learning a new attack strategy. Nobody learns a new formation overnight, not even you."

She gave him a wan smile. "I want to be better. I want to belong. With you. I do, Kyle." She bit her lip, then pulled him down for a kiss. "I do love you, for whatever that's worth."

"I'm human, Sarah," he murmured. "And so are you. So for us, that's worth everything."

Maybe with time, she could believe that, too.

***  
***


	9. Starting All Over Again

Lars' boyfriend Angelo was a sous chef, and was only too happy to help teach Kyle and Sarah how to do a few more dishes. Kyle took to it better than Sarah did, and she found that she didn't mind Angelo teasing her on her inability to figure out which flavors and textures went together in food when Kyle did. He was good at building things, and picked up on the nuances of how they worked very quickly.

Grant and Kyle went on mysterious trips periodically, and Kyle would only explain that it was for a surprise. His other coworkers needed help with something, or wanted to spend more time with him, and Sarah tried hard not to feel jealous. On those nights, she stayed at home with Pops, silently working on projects for his contacts. She read books for class, watched TV, or tried to figure out the internet. Sometimes she visited Natalie. Lars even offered to go with her places, especially the art galleries. "I can tell you all about the Haight in its heyday," he said with a fond smile. "Most of the people I knew from back then are gone, but there are still plenty of fun spots in this city."

"I kinda don't know what I think of as fun," Sarah admitted.

"Nat'll help. And I have other friends, outside the NA crowd, if you feel uncomfortable with that," he suggested. "Not that you have to talk about the whole sordid history or anything, but because staying at home and hiding in the dark helps no one."

"Says the man living in the basement."

"Rent free, thank you very much," Lars replied loftily. "Which is quite the feat around here, let me tell you. San Francisco is not cheap, Sarah. Most big cities aren't, but we especially aren't. I'm not going to take a gift like this and throw it away."

"Good point," Sarah murmured. "I guess... Without some direct goal in mind, I'm not sure where to go from there. I'm not sure what I need to do."

"Why _do_ anything?" Lars asked. "Experiencing life is still doing, if you need to _do_ something. You're luckier than most, Sarah."

"I know. That's why I have to do something to be better, to give back, something..."

"You did that," he told her gently. "You already gave up more than anyone should have to. Maybe none of us are the family you were born to, but take it from me, sometimes your found family is even more important."

Sarah blew out a breath. "I still feel like I'm missing something."

Lars rolled his eyes. "Of course you are. Kyle. You've got us, he's got his other friends, and you need to spend time together. Date your boyfriend. I know Nat told you to do that."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's the one that told me to do that with Angelo when I complained our love life was getting stagnant. And she's right. It's weird, pretending we're starting over when we've been together for six years now. But it was a fun weird for us. And from what you've said, you never even got to date. You skipped dating and went straight to living together and fucking after saving the world. So what do you know about what you like as a couple?"

"Not a damn thing," Sarah admitted.

"Exactly. So let me give you a few ideas for dates." Lars grinned. "And if it gets you in the mood, by all means, go for it."

Sarah snorted. "As if I need your permission to have sex with Kyle."

"No, but you probably haven't had any action recently. Probably got you cranky." He laughed when Sarah gave him a shove. "Definitely got you cranky."

"I can get off if I need to, thank you very much," she huffed.

"Girl, getting off and getting laid are very different things."

He had a point, even if she didn't want to admit it.

Lars had also been right about it feeling odd to go out on a date with Kyle. They were silly together once the awkwardness wore thin, and it did suddenly seem like such a wonderful idea. It wasn't until the third date that Sarah pinned Kyle to the wall of their bedroom and attacked his buttons with a vengeance. "Uh, Sarah," he began, bewildered.

"You wearing clothes right now is so offensive, I have no words," she said, mouthing his skin as soon as she exposed it. Her teeth grazed his nipple as she tugged off his shirt, making him moan and gasp a little. "And it is has been _way_ too long."

"You're right," Kyle agreed, helping her get his clothes off before moving on to hers.

Kyle pinned her to the bed, his hands on her wrists, holding her down. He kissed her as if she was the air he needed to breathe, as if it was the only thing keeping him sane. Sarah felt the same, and responded in kind. It felt like a fever in her blood, a need she would never find the accurate words for. Instead, she pushed him off of her and straddled him. Sarah linked her hand through one of his and reached between them to guide his cock into her. "I don't wanna wait too long right now," she said, sinking down.

Groaning, Kyle nodded. "Good idea. You're full of good ideas."

Sarah started moving, rocking hard on top of him before leaning back and grasping his thighs behind her. "I dunno," she gasped. "You get good ones, too."

"This one was definitely a good one."

"Glad I thought of it," she joked, then moaned as she ground down hard. "God, that right there feels so damn good. Why were we picking on each other again?"

"Don't know any better," Kyle offered, pulling her forward so that he could kiss her. "But it stopped, and that's the part to think about."

She stopped grinding on his cock to lean forward. The kiss was soft, tender, and she ran her hands along his body. He laughed when she hit a ticklish spot, making her laugh in turn, and he used the opportunity to turn her onto her back. "I like this," he murmured.

"Being silly?" she asked, smile freezing in place.

"Your smile," he said, shifting his weight onto one hand so that he could trace her lips as if he was trying to memorize her face. "Seeing it in person. Knowing I've put it there."

"You're such a sap."

"Yeah," he agreed, not embarrassed at all. Moving his hand from her mouth to his cock, he repositioned it to slide into her, then leaned back to pick up her legs and lean them up against his chest. His next thrust made her gasp and he groaned, tightening his grip on her calves.

"Do that again," she demanded. "I'm close, I think you can get me to come this way."

Kyle did, gradually picking up speed in time to her gasps. Sarah had one hand reaching down to grasp his thigh, the other kneading her own breast and pinching her nipple. He made a gurgling noise at the sight, nearly coming right there.

She clenched down tight around his cock as she came, arching her back and calling his name. He stilled immediately, biting his lip and looking away from her. "I need a minute."

"You came, too?" she asked breathlessly, letting one of her legs fall to the side. When he shook his head, not able to speak, she shimmied away from him. Sarah couldn't help but give him a saucy grin at the obscene sound of his cock sliding wetly out of her. "Then I can probably even get another orgasm before you do."

"Greedy," he murmured, eyes drawn to the slick wetness between her thighs.

"Absolutely," Sarah purred, rolling to her hands and knees. "Do it this way," she told him, looking over her shoulder at him. She even wiggled her ass when he didn't move right away, laughing a little at his gobsmacked expression. "C'mon, Kyle."

He slid into her from behind, and they both groaned at the sensation. Sarah shifted to rub her clit as Kyle thrust into her, and she turned her face to muffle her cries in the bed. She closed her eyes, the better to sink into the sensation of it all, the better to feel every movement and ounce of pleasure singing along her nerves.

Always the gentleman, Kyle thrust through his orgasm to try to bring her off again, even though he hissed at the overstimulation. Sarah let out a sharp cry as she came again, then let herself sag down against the bed.

She smiled blissfully at him as he caressed her hips and back, letting her come down from the high slowly. Twisting enough that she could grasp his arm, Sarah opened her eyes and murmured "I love you, Kyle."

Kyle's grin was beautiful to see. "I love you, too."

***

"I think there's something to this dating thing," Sarah mentioned during a summer BBQ at Grant's apartment building. His building had a courtyard in the back that residents could use, and he of course had invited Kyle, Andrew, a number of other coworkers and their significant others. To Sarah's surprise, he had also invited Natalie.

Natalie playfully bumped her shoulder into Sarah's. "See? You can't take each other for granted or just assume you know what he's thinking."

"Working on it."

And they really were. They saw movies together on Friday or Saturday nights, which led to rather animated discussions about them and any inaccuracies of plot or military action. They tried going to clubs, and discovered that they both hated the dance clubs with a passion. She wound up finding collections of 80's music to play in the apartment, and they simply danced together that way. Natalie loaned her CD's of 90's and 00's music, and the pair were planning to work their way through them, too. Late night diners were fun, and Kyle actually folded up napkins and used straws to create a table hockey rink. The waitress serving them only sighed and muttered under their breath, but Sarah was sure to tip her well and not leave too much of a mess behind for her to clean up.

"I like his friend," Natalie said in an offhand manner. "Sweet guy, built and really easy to talk to." She ducked her head when Sarah gaped at her. "I'm not going to rush into anything, but he kinda reminds me of my second girlfriend."

Wracking her memory, Sarah couldn't remember her name. "The one that moved away?"

"Yeah, that one," Natalie said with a nod. She took a swig of her soda. "Not the looks or anything, obviously, because Grant's a dude. But I mean how I felt. Comfortable. Like we could talk about a dozen different things every day and still find something new to talk about. I like that feeling."

"Like home," Sarah murmured, glancing across the partygoers toward Kyle. Almost as if he could feel her gaze, he looked up and caught her staring. He grinned, and she wound up giving him a shy one in return.

"You guys are disgustingly cute," Natalie declared. "But yeah, like that. So I'm not gonna ruin anything. Just friends for now, but if something happens, I'm not gonna be upset."

Sarah swung one arm around Natalie's shoulders. "Just promise me one thing, Nat."

"What?"

"Don't pick some horrible dress for me to wear as a bridesmaid."

Natalie sputtered and gave Sarah a shove as she broke out into laughter. "I'm gonna get you back for that one," Natalie promised, starting to laugh herself.

"I can take you," Sarah scoffed playfully.

"You remember this moment, Sarah," her friend replied, wagging a finger in her direction. She pulled a playfully angry face. "Know who your friends are."

"You guys," Sarah said promptly, pulling her back in for a one armed hug.

"And don't you forget it," Natalie said, bonking Sarah's head lightheartedly with her own.

She thought of the tattoo on the inside of Kyle's arm, the stick figures and childish outline of a house. She'd never asked him what it had meant yet, knowing that it was intensely personal for him. Maybe she should get something inked herself, to forever remind herself of this moment, of that feeling of belonging that she had.

"What about a tattoo to remember?" Sarah asked.

"You're into tats?" Natalie asked, surprised.

"No, but it's more the meaning of it. To have something to remember all of this. Kyle, Pops, you, Lars, Antonio, Grant, parties like this, school, even... That I remember there's a reason for everything. I won't call it fate, I can't, but that I _can_ go on, even if I think I can't. So I can look at it and not think stupid things."

Natalie cocked her head to the side and thought about it. "Something like a phoenix?"

"I don't know what I want."

"Well, you have time to figure that out."

Sarah looked back across the party at Kyle, who was talking with Grant and Andrew, animatedly gesturing as he talked, still with a beer in his right hand. This Kyle had a future now, time to do things and find friends. She had a future as something other than the Mother of the Resistance, and maybe it wasn't as frightening as she used to find it.

So she grinned at Natalie and gave her a friendly bump on the shoulder. "Yeah, I do."

When Natalie wandered away to go meet more people in Grant's building, Sarah headed over to the grill to get herself another burger. There was a screen of trees between the communal grill and a few benches near the garden area, so it was easy to feel as though the space was private. It wasn't, not really, not in the sense that it was soundproofed.

Because Sarah could hear Grant, Kyle, Andrew and the other friend from work whose name she couldn't remember. "That's some seriously messed up shit," the other friend was saying.

Kyle sighed gustily. "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything..."

"Oh, no," Grant interrupted. "Because now that makes complete sense. The flashbacks without having any unit numbers or knowing what I was talking about with Afghanistan. Why she's so important to you even though for a while you two were barely even talking."

Sarah could imagine his frown as he thought of what to say next. "It's not that. It's... She had her points, underneath the hurtful way she put it. I think she wanted to drive me away. The way she talked about herself... She thought she was nothing. It wasn't the Sarah that I heard about, and I couldn't make it line up in my head."

"But the Sarah you heard about isn't this one," Andrew pointed out.

"It took me a while to see that," Kyle agreed.

"And she's trying, we can all see that. I think the hard part is, it's not like either of you knew what to do next. There's nobody else from the future you knew here that you could decompress with. Not like us coming back from the military and going to the VA or support groups, saying how hard it is to adjust." Grant sounded thoughtful, and Sarah wanted to yell through the trees to agree with him, that it was awful feeling so alone, that everyone else would be better off far away from her disagreeable and hard edged self.

"Because you can't walk up to ordinary people and expect them to know," the other friend said, probably nodding. "They don't understand the feeling of leaving people behind to save the rest of your unit. Or knowing what the sound of ordinance falling is like."

"Exactly that," Kyle said, and Sarah could imagine his earnest nod. "There are movies on TV or in theaters that make it seem like war is a glorious thing, but it's stupid and awful and shitty. You don't build anything. You just destroy and hope there's enough left to rebuild from."

"So maybe you need to build something new," Grant suggested. "And I mean that literally. Build something with your own two hands, something that could outlast Judgment Day, if it ever comes again. Know that you're planning ahead, that history isn't something that just happened to you. You're a grown ass man. You're not some helpless kid."

Kyle blew out a breath. "I like that idea."

"Because I'm full of good ones," Grant said, smile evident in his tone.

"Full of something, all right," Andrew teased.

Sarah eased away from the grill as the other friend began talking again, something about a different kind of ordinance that they would have to work through, about the kind of details he would want to pay attention to. Kyle had his supports, just as she had hers. He sounded calm and comfortable, understood. She couldn't help but smile at the thought that his friends knew, just as hers did. Because if she couldn't help him with his nightmares, she knew that they would be able to, and Kyle would be safe.

Whatever the future held, that was important to her.

***

Outside the city was a lot of greenery, mostly from the larger homes with yards, parks and schools. Sarah tried to keep her thoughts to herself, because she felt almost uncomfortable; if there was ever a problem, the neighbors were too far away. At the same time, the distance also afforded them more privacy. She wasn't sure which was the better option to have, as she was used to hiding in crowds and disappearing from view in cities.

Kyle turned down a side street and pulled up in front of a low picket fence with flowerbeds and bushes. "We're here."

Sarah got out of the car with a slight frown on her face, turning to Kyle. "But where's here?"

"Take a look."

He was grinning, eager to have her opinion on something, so Sarah turned away from him and the car. She stopped cold at the sight in front of her.

The house was similar to the cabin she had gone to with her parents, but with a wide wraparound porch in the front. There was a swing on one end of the porch, as well as chairs and a little table off on the other side. There were large front windows to let in light and a wreath of flowers on the front door. The exterior was a bright, sunny yellow with white trim and accents, and the roof was done in slate blue. The house had two floors, and by the width of the windows, looked to have a lot of space in the rooms.

"The yard's fenced," Kyle said, coming up behind her. "I was thinking of getting a few German shepherds, letting them patrol the yard. They can bark up a storm if there's a Terminator nearby, so it's a good warning and protection system." He wrapped his arms around her, realizing she was too stunned to speak. He dropped his chin on top of her head and rubbed her arms. "Let's take a tour."

There was a fully stocked kitchen, likely due to Angelo's input, as well as a large open concept living room and dining area. Kyle was sure to point out all of the hiding places for weapons and go bags throughout the space. A gym was set up to give them a place to train and keep in shape, which their current apartment lacked. It had a bathroom with shower off to the side, as if the space was modeled off of a master bedroom, but there was no closet in the gym. There was also a separate half bath near the kitchen. Bedrooms were upstairs, as well as two bathrooms, all done up with high end, quality fixtures that were made to last. As with the downstairs, crevices for weaponry and ammunition had been worked into the design, as well as a safe for cash, jewels, fake ID's and some rations. He also showed her the secret passage between the bedroom closets and the ladder down from the passage into the bathroom off of the gym. It was right next to the garage in the back of the house, and that wall slid back to allow for an easy escape. The garage passageway exit was hidden by the emergency generator and utilities.

"I did it myself," Kyle said. "With help from the guys and Pops, of course. The design is partly based on the cabin you used to go to as a kid, partly on the house I grew up in."

Sarah looked around, lips opening and closing, not sure what to say. "Oh my God," she finally said, knowing Kyle wanted her to say something. "This is... Wow. It's amazing."

"I built this for us. To start over, to have a place to protect. A place we can feel safe."

She turned in his arms, a grin on her face. Pulling him down for a kiss, she smiled against his mouth. "A home. _Our_ home."

The future was looking up for them after all.

The End


End file.
